Author: Keiran

Forex trader, media, marketing, entrepreneur and father

BitMEXTutorial & In Depth Guide Part 3 – Can Beginners Trade?

Post author By Keiran
Post date 17 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/R95lcaUoTEc

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 4/5) – BitMEX’s beginner-friendliness and customer support

This part of our guide will dig deeper into what BitMEX has to offer in terms of customer support and if it is generally a beginner-friendly platform.

Is BitMEX beginner-friendly?

BitMEX attracts a great deal of volume across crypto-to-crypto transfers. This helps maintain BitMEX as a hot topic. On top of that, BitMEX has relatively low trading fees and can be used around the world (except in the US).

All this helps attract the attention of beginners that want to trade on leverage. When starting, the platform offers 5 to navigate:

Trade tab: This is the trading part of BitMEX. This tab allows traders to select their preferred trading instrument as well as to choose leverage. They can place and cancel orders in this tab. This tab shows the taken position information as well as other key information in the contract details.

Account tab: This tab shows all the account information. This includes the available Bitcoin margin balances, deposits, withdrawals as well as trade history.

Contracts tab: This tab shows additional instrument information. This includes funding history, contract sizes, leverage, offered expiry, underlying reference Price Index data, and other key features.

References tab: This tab allows users to learn about futures, perpetual contracts, position marking, as well as and liquidation.

API tab: This tab offers the option to set up an API connection with the BitMEX platform.
BitMEX employs customer support that is available 24/7. The BitMEX team can also be contacted via Twitter or Reddit.

In addition to this, BitMEX offers a variety of educational resources. This includes their FAQ section as well as guides on futures and perpetual contracts.

BitMEX also has a blog that produces high-level descriptions of numerous subjects.
BitMEX offers quite a lot of features, but the truth is that the platform is not exactly suitable for beginners. Margin trading, futures contracts, and swaps are not easily understandable concepts that push beginners away from the platform.

BitMEX Customer Support

As previously mentioned, BitMEX has 24/7 customer support on multiple channels. This includes email support, ticket systems, as well as social media support. The typical response time of their customer support is approximately one hour. Most BitMEX users noted that the customer support service responses are generally helpful and that they are not automatized.

The BitMEX platform also offers a knowledge-base as well as the ‘frequently asked question’ section. These may not always be helpful, but they may offer some assistance when it comes to directing users towards the channels, which will provide further assistance.
Make sure to check out the fifth part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into the BitMEX platform’s safety and security.

Tags Bitmex, Crypto, Exchange

Crypto Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 3 – Is Your Money Safe? Is It Insured?

Post author By Keiran
Post date 17 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/ISAurVVeduQ

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 3/5) – TT International partnership and insurance fund

This part of the BitMEX guide will show its partnership with Trading Technologies International and how it affects the users, as well as the insurance fund’s importance in ensuring that every trader gets their fair share of profits.

Trading Technologies International – BitMEX partnership

HDR Global Trading, the company behind BitMEX, has partnered with Trading Technologies International in 2019. Trading Technologies International is a leading high-performance trading software provider. The TT platform’s design is aimed specifically at professional traders, brokers, as well as market-access providers. It incorporates a wide variety of both trading tools as well as analytical indicators. This partnership is crucial because it provides BitMEX traders with global market access as well as trade execution through TT’s privately managed infrastructure.

The BitMEX insurance fund
One of the main selling features of most trading platforms is margin trading. However, as a result of how much leverage is involved on these platforms, it’s entirely possible that the losers could not be able to cover the margin in their positions in order to pay the winners.

Traditional exchanges such as the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) try to offset this problem by using multiple layers of protection. Cryptocurrency trading platforms are currently unable to match these levels of protection provided to winning traders.

To solve this issue, BitMEX created an insurance fund system. When a trader opens a leveraged position, the position is unwilling and forcefully liquidated as soon as their maintenance margin drops too much.
A trader’s profits and losses do not reflect the actual position price. When a trader is liquidated on BitMEX, their equity previously associated with the open position goes down to zero.
To better explain it, we will present you with an example. The trader has taken a long position with leverage of 100x. If the price of Bitcoin drops 0.5%, their position will get liquidated.
It doesn’t matter what the exact price of this trade is when it is executed. From the view of the trader, whatever their liquidation price is, they lose all the funds they had previously put into this position.

Assuming that the market is fully liquid, the bid/ask spread will be tighter than the maintenance margin. In this case, liquidations will manifest as contributions to the insurance fund, as the maintenance margin is 50bps while the market is 1bp wide. The insurance fund should, in this case, rise by around the same amount as the maintenance margin as soon as the position is liquidated. The insurance fund will continue its steady growth as long as the market is fully liquid.

The first chart shows healthy market conditions with a narrow bid/ask spread of just $2 at the liquidation time. The closing trade, in this case, occurs at a higher price than what the bankruptcy price is. Therefore, the insurance fund will benefit from the liquidation.

Example of insurance contribution – 100x long with 1 BTC collateral

The second chart, on the other hand, shows a wide bid/ask spread at the liquidation time. In this case, the closing trade will take place at a lower price than what the bankruptcy price is. Therefore, the insurance fund will have to make sure that the winning traders receive a fair share of profit.

Example of insurance depletion – 100x long with 1 BTC collateral

The bid and offer prices show the state of the order book when the liquidation occurs. The closing price is $3,800, which represents $20 of slippage when compared to the $3,820 bid price.
Note that the illustrations are just oversimplified examples that do not take into consideration fees or other adjustments.
Make sure to check out the fourth part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s beginner-friendliness and customer support.

Tags Bitmex, Crypto, Crypto Trading, Exchange, trading

Forex Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 2 – Borrowing Money To Trade Through Leverage

Post author By Keiran
Post date 16 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/6pq8m3fIXrE

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 2/5) – contracts and fees

Part 2 of our in-depth guide will focus on explaining what BitMEX offers in terms of contracts, leverage, and how they structure their fees.

Futures and Swaps
A futures contract is, in a nutshell, an agreement to buy or sell an asset in the future. The price of this contract is predetermined. BitMEX allows users to leverage their funds up to 100x on certain futures contracts.
Perpetual swaps are very similar to futures contracts. The difference is that there is no expiry date, and therefore no settlement.
BitMEX also offers Binary series contracts. They are prediction-based contracts that can settle at either 0 or 100. These contracts are a much more complicated way of betting on a given event.

Bitmex Leverage

BitMEX allows its traders to use leverage in their positions. Leverage is the ability to virtually borrow money from the platform to place orders that exceed the users’ existing balance. This gives users bigger profits in comparison to placing an order that uses only their wallet balance. Trading, while using leverage, is called “Margin Trading.”

There are two types of Margin Trading:
Isolated – allows the user to select how much of their wallet balance should be used to hold their position when they place an order.
Cross-Margin – all of the users’ wallet balance can be used to hold their position. This type of margin trading should be treated with extreme caution.

The BitMEX platform allows its users to set their leverage by using a simple leverage slider. The platform offers maximum leverage of 1:100 on some assets, while others have lower maximum leverage.

BitMEX Fees

Traditional futures trading has a straightforward fee schedule on BitMEX. As previously noted, BitMEX offers up to 100x leverage, with the amount of leverage that varies from asset to asset.

There are, however, additional fees for hidden orders. A hidden order has to pay the taker fee up until the entire hidden quantity is fully executed. Only after that, the order will become regular, and the user will receive the rebate for the amount.

Deposits and Withdrawals
BitMEX deposits or withdrawals are free. However, the withdrawal fee is based on blockchain load, and the user has to pay only the network fee. The only costs of withdrawal are those of the banks and the cryptocurrency networks.

BitMEX accepts deposits only in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, therefore, serves as collateral on all trading contracts, regardless of whether the trade involves Bitcoin or not.
The minimum deposit on BitMEX is 0.001 BTC. There are no limits to the withdrawal size.

Deposits can be made at any time of the day and will be processed as fast as the network processes the payment. On the other hand, the withdrawals are processed manually once per day. The hand processed withdrawals are there to increase the security level of its users’ funds.
Supported Currencies
BitMEX can be defined as a crypto-to-crypto exchange that makes use of a Bitcoin-in and Bitcoin-out structure. The platform users are currently not able to use fiat currencies as any form of payment.
BitMEX currently supports the following cryptocurrencies:
Bitcoin;
Bitcoin Cash;
Cardano;
Ethereum;
EOS;
Litecoin;
Tron;
Ripple.
Make sure to watch the third part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s TT international partnership as well as its insurance fund.

Tags Bitmex, Crypto, Crypto Trading, Exchange

Forex Videos

FOREX – Know Your Market – Safe Haven’s & Confluence

Post author By Keiran
Post date 15 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/0UsC4atQLHg

Know your market, know your levels

The financial market includes the forex market, derivatives, Bitcoin, commodities, gold, oil, stocks and indices, and bonds. They are all interconnected in many ways, with investors coming out of one aspect due to perceived risk and diverting some or all of their portfolio into another aspect of the financial market. This makes the financial markets more fluid and often more volatile.

A lot of new traders make the mistake of learning a little bit about the forex market, opening up a trading account, and then shortly after having a punt on another market such as gold or stocks and indices. Often with horrendous results.
While it is imperative that traders quickly try to comprehend how these markets are interwoven and what affects what, it is advised that in the early days of trading, new traders learn to stick to one aspect of the market at a time.

Example A

This shows a 1-hour chart of the Dow Jones 30 index. A black arrow marks an area where the market was heavily sold off during the Asian session.

Example B

If we now look at example B, we can see that the US dollar Japanese yen pair was simultaneously being sold off to lower levels. In actual fact, what was happening here was that due to the Dow Jones being sold off, traders were buying yen because this currency is perceived to be a safe haven currency.
This is just one example of how these markets are interwoven. But, it proves to be a very short and important lesson with regards to not understanding the risk of trading one asset, such as Forex, without focusing on potential risks of another asset, in this case, the DOW index.
Incidentally, if we now revert back to example A, we can see that after the sell-off of the Dow Jones, there was a bounce higher in the index, and If we also now revert to example B, we can see that US dollar-yen also reversed from its lows and moved higher.
This also shows that the Dow Jones and US dollar-yen pair are almost moving in unison; they are acting in a way that the market calls correlation.
One of the biggest mistakes that new traders make is to flit from one trading chart to another and from one currency pair to another, without appropriately evaluating the exchange rate levels.
The best way to understand these moves is to read charts from left to right because it tells a story. New traders must learn to understand why price action hits certain key levels and whether this is associated with fundamental or technical reasons. By getting a full grasp of the reasons for currency moves new

traders will more easily be able to identify trading levels and then, of course, adjust their trading around them.

Tags Forex, Safe havens, trading

Forex Videos

BitMEX Tutorial & In Depth Guide Part 1

Post author By Keiran
Post date 15 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/g3mTV27qV9M

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 1/5) – BitMEX explained

Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, better known as BitMEX, is one of the biggest Bitcoin trading platforms currently operating. Its daily trading volume is often over 35,000 BTC monthly. It can also pride itself with over 540,000 monthly accesses, as well as with a trading volume of over $34 billion in Bitcoin since it started operating.

Unlike many other crypto trading platforms, BitMEX only accepts Bitcoin deposits. They can then be used to purchase a variety of cryptocurrencies. BitMEX specializes in advanced financial operations, such as margin trading. BitMEX is currently working without any regulation, much like many other exchanges.
It was founded by HDR Global Trading Limited in 2014 and registered in Seychelles. Its owners and creators are former bankers Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed, and Ben Delo.

BitMEX’s team comprises of many people, including experienced developers, economists as well as high-frequency algorithm traders.

Signing up to BitMEX

To create an account on BitMEX, users have to register with the website. Registration is extremely quick, as it only requires an email address. The email address, however, must be a genuine address because users will receive a registration confirmation email in order to verify the account. Once registered, users have absolutely no trading limits. Traders must be at least 18 years old to sign up.

BitMEX, however, does not accept any US-based traders. The company will use IP checks to verify that their users are not in the US. While some US users manage to bypass this restriction with the use of a VPN, it is not exactly recommended for US individuals to sign up for the BitMEX platform.

How to Use BitMEX

BitMEX allows its users to trade various cryptocurrencies against various fiat currencies. Users can trade their cryptocurrency against the USD, the Japanese Yen as well as the Chinese Yuan. BitMEX allows its users to trade quite a bit of different cryptocurrencies:

Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash
Cardano
Ethereum
EOS
Litecoin
Tron
Ripple

BitMEX trading platform is considered very intuitive and easy to use for users that are familiar with advanced trading platforms. However, a beginner may have a hard time following everything on the screen. The interface looks a little dated when compared to some of the newer exchanges such as Binance and Kucoin. Signed up and logged in, traders can click on Trade, where they will find all the trading instruments available.

Clicking on any of the instruments opens the order book, recent trades, as well as the order slip on the left. The order book will show three columns:

Bid value for the underlying asset!
Quantity of the order!
Total USD value of all orders. This includes both shorts and longs!

Trading widgets can be changed and customized according to the user’s viewing preferences. This allows users to have full and absolute control over what is displayed and how. On top of that, BitMEX provides its users with TradingView charting. This feature offers a wide range of charting tools provided by the TradingView platform.

Once a user enters a trade, they can see all orders in the trading platform interface. Tabs showing users their Active Orders, Stops that are in place, Orders Filled (in total or partially) as well as the trade history can be easily found on the main screen.

Even though BitMEX is optimized for mobile use, it only has an unofficial Android app. There are no iOS apps available at the moment. However, trading by using so many advanced features might require using a desktop or a laptop in order to comprehend everything happening on the screen.

Types of orders at BitMEX

Traders are not limited to only simple buying and selling on BitMEX. BitMEX offers various order types for users:

Limit Order (the order will be fulfilled only if the given price is achieved);

Market order (the order is executed instantly and at current market price);

Stop Limit Order (a form of a Stop Order; allows users to set the order price once the Stop Price triggers)

Stop Market Order (a Stop Order that that remains unseen from the order books until the market reaches the trigger price)

Trailing Stop Order (very similar to a Stop Market Order; users set a trailing value that is then used to place the Market Order)

Take Profit Limit Order (the opposite of a Stop Order, used to set a profit target)

Take Profit Market Order (almost the same as the previous type. However, this order will set the order triggered as a Market Order, not as a Limit Order).

Make sure to watch the second part of our BitMEX in-depth guide, where we will look into BitMEX’s futures and swaps, leveraged trades as well as fees!

Tags Bitmex, Crypto, Crypto Trading, Exchange

Forex Videos

Can I Become A Forex Trader?

Post author By Keiran
Post date 14 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/0KterX1gcPI

A New Traders Best Friend

So you want to be a financial trader in the foreign exchange market. Congratulations, you have taken the first step towards a rewarding career training the forex market. The absolute best advice that anybody could give you in your new venture is to first and foremost get an education. Because you would not strip a car engine down if you did not know what you were doing, and you would not set up a business as a house builder if you didn’t have the right knowledge skill set, and you certainly wouldn’t set yourself up has a vet if you had not been to veterinary school in the first place.

Trading the financial markets, and in particular with regard to Forex, is a professional arena, filled with institutional traders who have degrees in economics and spent time at university studying for relevant qualifications such as mathematics.

Whilst you do not need to be a mathematician to be a successful financial trader, you do need to understand what is going on in the market at all times, and you must understand the inherent risks associated with trading.

All of that starts with education, and here at Forex.Academy we have all the tools that you will need to give you the correct grounding in this arena where over $5 trillion changes hands a day.
Therefore, the best friends that you could have during the early stages of your forex trading development is a full education on technical and fundamental analysis and then a demo account to practice risk free during real market events. It is absolutely essential that you do not learn a couple of things about technical analysis and then think that you are good enough to bet your money trading. Because anything less than getting an education and putting your new found methodology and trading skills to good use with virtual trading funds in the first instance is tantamount to gambling.

A demo account will allow you to develop skills and then put your trading style into practice , as you learn, without risking your hard-earned cash. Only when you become proficient and are regularly making money on your demo account, while taking into account the risk to reward ratio that you will need to implement, will you be able to open a live account with real money.
Even then you should take into account the emotional impact of trading with real hard cash as opposed to a trading a demo account, where losses have no, or very little emotional impact on you.

Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

The Basics Of Statistical Analysis In Forex Part 3 – Predicting The Future

Post author By Keiran
Post date 13 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/Wwhq8UAG8l0

Why you should Know The Normal Distribution

What is a Distribution

A Distribution comes from our need to measure and qualify objects or items when the potential number of elements is too large to evaluate one by one. It is hardly practical to have a record of all the heights, weights, races, clothes, and shoe sizes of every person. It is impossible to have a record of all possible stock or Forex pairs prices. Of course, we already have a historical record, but we cannot have a record of future prices. But we want and need information about these and other items.

Wouldn’t it be great to have valuable collective information about the properties of the data collection instead of an endless list of prices, heights, or weights?

Histograms

Let’s imagine that we are to record daily price changes from the current open to the previous day open. We could see that some days the price seldom moves while others there are larger and larger movements. Lets only plot ten possible ranges five on the positive side and five on the negative side, from zero to ±0.21, ± 0.2% – ±0.4%, and on toll ±0.8% -±1%. All changes bigger than 1% will be included in the ±0.8% – ±1% range.

We have made a histogram of price changes. It is a very coarse approach to prices, but it shows useful information. We see that it is more common small changes than large changes, for instance.
We could refine it using more bins. This is how it looks using 40 bins.

Using fewer bins, we can perceive the same distribution than using more bins. We lose information, but if we chose the bin distribution appropriately binning is quite convenient.

The Normal Distribution

Karl Friedrick Gauss was thought to discover the Normal Distribution, also called Gaussian Distribution, although 100 years earlier was described by Abraham d Moivre. Still, his discovery remained obscured until after Gauss published it. It is considered the most useful distribution in modeling due to the fact that many phenomena follow the Normal Distribution. Measures of height, weight, intelligence levels closely follow the normal distribution. Also, the Normal Distribution is the limiting form of other distribution types.

The Central Limit Theorem

One of the key statistical applications involving the Gaussian Distribution has to do with how the averages distribute. That is, if we take several random samples of a collection of data, the averages of the samples will approximate to a Normal Distribution, regardless of the distribution of the original data. This is very powerful because it allows us to generalize about future prices from the averages computed using samples of historical data.

Properties of the Normal Distribution

The Mean (M)
The most obvious measure of the Normal Distribution is its Average or Mean.
M = SUM ( All elements ) / N (the number of elements)
The mean tells us the most common value of the distribution. If the distribution were about prices, it would tell us the fair value of the asset.
The Standard Deviation (SD)
The other significative measure of the Normal Distribution is the Standard Deviation. Computing it is a bit more complicated than the average, but it is rather easy as well.
The standard deviation tells us how far from the center, on average, are its elements.

1.- We measure the distance of every individual component (dxi) from the mean
dxi = M – xi

2.- Since the differences may be positive or negative, we square this value to take away the sign, creating a collection of squared differences.
dxi2 = dxi^2

3.- We take the average of the squared differences. The result is called the variance (Var).

Var = SUM( dxi2)/ (N-1)

Wait? Why N-1? Well, that has to do with the fact we are dealing with samples, not the whole population. By dividing by N-1 will make the value less optimistic on short samples. As the sample size grows, the Sample Variance gets closer and closer to the population variance.

4.- We take the square root of the sample variance, and the result is the Standard Deviation

SD = √ Var

Normal Probabilities

Normal distribution probabilities

Now that we have our data (prices, trade returns, and so forth), we can use the normal distribution to extract useful information.
If the distribution, for instance, were the returns of our strategy, we would arrive at two main values: The average profit and the standard Deviation of the profits. What can that tell us about what to expect from our future returns?
The Normal Distribution is well known, so we have how values are statistically distributed.
We know that 68.2% of the values lie within one SD from the mean, 95.4% of the values lie within 2SD, and 99.7% of them within 3SD.
Let’s say as an exercise that your mean gain is 100 dollars with an SD of 60. What can we expect from our future profits?

We can anticipate that

64% of the time, our returns will lie between 40 and 160 dollars,
13.6% of the time will be between -20 and +40 dollars,
13.6% between 150 and 210 dollars.
2.1% of the time your strategy will lose from 20 to 80 dollars
but also,
2.1% of the time, you will get from 210 to 270 dollars.

As a caveat, Usually, the distribution of gains and losses is not normally distributed. Therefore we should not expect the percentages shown here. As homework, google about the Chevyshev’s inequality for a more general probability scaling.

Tags Crypto, Education, Forex, Normal distribution forex, trading

Forex Videos

Forex Risk VS Sentiment – Bad News For The Pound!

Post author By Keiran
Post date 13 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/d7Q7VU8jX0o

Risk versus Sentiment

Traders interpret technical analysis on their screen charts in many ways, such as price action. But they are always reading between the lines in terms of perceived risk and sentiment, which may have little bearing in the price of a currency pair before an important event.
One such event, as in Example A, is a screenshot of a one hour chart of the GBPUSD pair on the 6th of December 2019. The British people were voting this day on an election, which would have a strong bearing with regard to Britain’s possible exit from the European Union: Brexit.

In the example, we can see that just before exit poll information was released at 10 p.m. GMT, the pair began to fall, was being sold off. This was due to perceived risk That Boris Johnson’s conservative government would not win the election, and therefore allowing labor to potentially win and where their pledges of heavy government borrowing were perceived by the traders as being bad news for the pound.

However, the exit polls indicated that the conservative government would win with a major majority the pound surged to over 1.350. When the dust began to settle, and some profit-taking took place, risk began to unnerve traders, who perceived that although Brexit was likely to happen now, the government might not be able to get all of the necessary laws in place for this to happen within the designated time frame to complete all of these laws and to broker a new trade deal with the European Union by December 2020. Therefore the pound began to fall again.
As a trader, it is imperative that when you see a major political event unfold, such as this one, that you fully understand what is going on at the time of the event, and not just afterwards, because By fully understanding the risks that are involved in such an event it will create an opportunity for you to make money.

However, many traders, in fact, did lose money trading this event because they were not fully appreciative of the risks involved. Not only the GBPUSD pair but also to other currencies, for example, the strength and weakness of the US dollar at the time of the event and also other currencies such as the Yen, Swiss Franc and the Euro, which were also being traded against the pound at this time.

Therefore during technical analysis, while traders depend on technical tools such as the MACD Stochastics and price action, it is imperative that traders are also mindful, and especially when it comes to major political events, with regard to perceived risk and sentiment.

Tags Forex, Market Sentiment, risk, trading

Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 5 – coinbase pro lower fees?

Post author By Keiran
Post date 10 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/fOoxfzhaHHM

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 5/5

The last part of our in-depth review of Coinbase will show us the differences and similarities between this exchange and Coinbase Pro.
Coinbase is considered one of the most popular Bitcoin brokers. As a matter of fact, its user base surpassed that of stock brokerage Charles Schwab. Coinbase’s popularity soared in 2017 due to the major influx of new people into the cryptocurrency “game.”Coinbase Pro, which is also owned by Coinbase, has seen a similar amount of growth in 2017.

Coinbase vs. Coinbase Pro

Buying cryptocurrency can be extremely confusing, especially if you are a newcomer.
Coinbase is a platform designed to be easy to use. Its main focus is first-time buyers. The simplicity of their platform makes it easy and intuitive for anyone to buy or sell cryptocurrency.
Coinbase Pro is, on the other hand, for more advanced users. It offers features such as bid-ask spreads, price charts, order books, different kinds of orders, and stop losses. While this is considered a perk when trading, it can be overwhelming for new buyers. Coinbase users can buy or sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currency or exchange them for another cryptocurrency. The website doesn’t have any fancy price charts, order books, or different types of orders.

Coinbase users are offered the option to only “buy” or “sell.”

Transaction fees

Coinbase’s fees are pretty hefty when compared to those of Coinbase Pro. Coinbase charges a 3.99% fee on credit/debit card transfers as well as a 1.49% fee on bank transfers, while Coinbase Pro charges much less. If done correctly, the fees can even be non-existent.
Coinbase Pro charges 0.1% to 0.25% for taker trades while it charges zero for maker trades. As long as the orders you place are limit orders, you won’t have to worry about paying any form of trading fee.

Cryptocurrency prices

Cryptocurrency prices on Coinbase are based on the Coinbase Pro prices. However, they do have a hidden premium.
As an example, Bitcoin’s price on Coinbase is always around $50 higher than what it is on Coinbase Pro.
Liquidity
Coinbase is an extremely big exchange, so there is no question about its liquidity. As far as Coinbase Pro’s liquidity goes, you won’t have to worry either.

Supported Countries

Coinbase Pro and Coinbase, being almost the same company, support almost the same countries. They do, however, differ slightly when it comes to some countries.
Coinbase Pro and Coinbase both support the following countries (in alphabetic order):
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States.
However, customers from Singapore, Canada, and Australia are only able to use Coinbase. They are, for the time being, not able to use Coinbase Pro.

Availability

Coinbase can be used on mobile devices as well. It has mobile apps for Android and iOS devices.
However, due to the complexity of the platform, there is no mobile app for Coinbase Pro. The workaround would be that the mobile version of the Coinbase Pro website works quite well on tablets and smartphones.

Withdrawal Fees

Coinbase charges a regular Bitcoin transaction fee for withdrawals, which is around $0.10
Coinbase Pro has no withdrawal fees whatsoever. It pays the Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin transaction fees for you.

Tags Coinbase pro, Crypto, Crypto Trading, exchanges

Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 4 – Adding Payment Methods & Saving Money

Post author By Keiran
Post date 9 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/ju7GTFVJT5E

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 4/5

This part of the review will guide you on how to add a payment method to your Coinbase account, as well as how to make your first cryptocurrency purchase.

Adding payment methods
Before buying any cryptocurrency on Coinbase, you will need to attach a payment method to the account. Coinbase offers support for three payment methods:
Debit card;
Bank account;
Wire transfer.
We will show you how to add a bank account as your payment method.

To start the process of adding a payment method, select the “Settings” tab located in the top middle of the page.

Once there, select the “Linked Accounts” tab.

Click on the “Link a New Account” button.

This will enable you to select your preferred payment method.

Debit card
Debit cards great for purchasing smaller amounts of cryptocurrency quickly. Debit card purchases credit the account with cryptocurrency instantly. This can come in handy if you want to buy a cryptocurrency quickly. On the other hand, debit cards have a lower purchase limit than other payment methods. Debit card limits may even be as low as $300 per week. On top of that, debit card purchases have extremely high fees, set at 4%.

Bank account
Bank Accounts are the opposite of debit cards. They better for larger purchases due to their higher limit, but are not immediate like debit cards. When purchasing crypto on Coinbase with a bank account, the price you pay for the cryptocurrency is locked in the moment of purchasing. However, you will not receive the cryptocurrency instantly, as the purchase will need 4-5 business days to process.

If the value of the cryptocurrency you bought goes up in the time it takes to process the transaction; you will have made money without doing anything. On the other hand, if the value of a cryptocurrency goes down, you will have lost money without ever even trading. Additionally, the aforementioned 4-5 days are the days you can not use to trade the bought cryptocurrency as you do not own it until it is credited to the account. With that being said, bank account purchases have some major upsides. The bank purchase limits are much higher. They are starting at $7,500 per week and can only be larger. The transfer fees are also much lower. They are set at 1.5%.

Purchasing cryptocurrency on Coinbase
With your account set up and payment methods added, you can finally start off with buying some cryptocurrency.
Start by clicking the “Buy/Sell” tab at the top of the Coinbase page.
Select the cryptocurrency of choice as well as the payment method and the dollar amount you wish to spend.

This will lead to the purchase confirmation page.
If you have the 2FA set up, Coinbase will ask for the code to confirm the purchase.

Selling cryptocurrency for fiat currency is a very similar process. The main difference between the two is that you cannot sell cryptocurrency using a credit card. Selling cryptocurrency on Coinbase can only be done by using a bank account or a Coinbase USD wallet that will keep your money on Coinbase.

For a more in-depth review of Coinbase, watch part 5 of our Coinbase Exchange in-depth guide.

Tags coinbase, Crypto, Crypto Trading, Exchange

Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 3 – How To Create A Coinbase Account & Security Features

Post author By Keiran
Post date 8 January, 2020
No Comments on Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 3 – How To Create A Coinbase Account & Security Features

https://youtu.be/LkCMSPnzMro

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 3/5

This part of our review will look at account creation and security features of Coinbase.

Creating an account

To set up an account with Coinbase, start off by visiting the Coinbase website and clicking “Sign Up.”

This will lead you to the account creation page. Fill in your name, email, password as well as location. Completing the captcha is also a necessity, as well as the “check” that you are over 18. After doing that and agreeing to the Coinbase user agreement and privacy policy, you have finished a major part of verification.

Coinbase will then send you an email that you have to use to continue with the verification.

This will lead you to the country/phone number part of the account setup.

After filling that info, a 7-digit code will be sent to your phone. You will need to write it in order to confirm the phone number.

After completing that, you may or may not be directed to verify your ID. If you are not instructed to do so, your account set up is complete. However, if you are directed to verify your ID, you will have to do it before you start using Coinbase.

ID Verification

As Coinbase is a US-based company, it must comply with the KYC and AML laws. Know Your Customer (KYC), as well as Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws, require US businesses to verify the identity of each of their customers.
For customers, however, this only means that they need to present a big chunk of their personal information, such as the last four digits of their social security number and their ID photo.
Coinbase will evaluate and potentially check the information presented, so the verification completion may take some time.

After filling out this information, you’ll also be required to submit a photo of your ID.

Verification Levels

Different verification levels offer different limits with Coinbase. If the account is phone-verified, you’ll be able to invest up to $9,500. However, if you verify your personal information, you’ll be allowed to invest an unlimited amount.

Additional Security

After verifying your ID, you’ll want to increase the security of your account by enabling the 2-Factor Authentication (2FA).
To do so, first select the settings tab.

Once you are there, select the Security tab and scroll down to the “Two-Factor Authentication” section.

Make sure that the verification code is set for any amount of cryptocurrency. Select the “Enable Authenticator” button to start the process.

A 7-digit code will be sent to your phone, and you will be required to enter it on Coinbase. After entering the SMS code, Coinbase will generate an authenticator code for you, which allows you to use the 2-Factor Authentication feature.
2FA is an additional security measure that works by generating unique codes based on your authenticator secret code, therefor making your account just a bit safer. To use it, you will have to download a 2FA app such as Google Authenticator to your phone.
After downloading the application, add the Coinbase authenticator code to the app. You can do this two ways:

by scanning the QR code;
by manually entering the authenticator code.

The mobile app will now generate 2FA codes for Coinbase. They will change every few seconds. Due to the code changing so quickly, someone attempting to get into your account would need to have access to your phone as well as the account info in order to access your funds.
Note: Make sure to write down your secret authenticator code. Store it somewhere safe as you will need this code when you are switching devices.

Once your 2FA is set up, your account will be secure and ready to go.

For a more in-depth review of Coinbase, watch part 4 of our Coinbase Exchange in-depth guide.

Tags coinbase, Crypto, Crypto Trading, Exchange

Forex Videos

The Basics Of Statistical Analysis In Forex Part 2 – Tip The Odds In Your Favour

Post author By Keiran
Post date 8 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/1I1D5BE2LHQ

Basic Probability Concepts II

In this video, we will continue to uncover the basic ideas about probability and the rules of summation and multiplication.

Probability

Probability is the term given for the measure of the likelihood of an event to occur. If we are entirely certain that the event will occur, the probability is one, or 100 percent. If an event can’t occur, the probability is zero. If the event is equally likely to occur or not, its probability is 0.5 or 50%. Thus, we see that the probability ranges between zero and one. No probability can be greater than one or less than zero.

Estimated probability

Usually, In science (and trading), there is no way to know the probability value in advance. In this case, the usual way to assess it is to do a finite number of trials and calculate the relative frequency of occurrence or the proportion of the event. This value is not the real probability, but an estimate of the probability. The larger the number of trials, the more accurate this estimate is.

The concept of estimated probability is really important because a lot of people think that the probability obtained using a sample is the real one when, in fact, it might be too optimistic or pessimistic. That is, the sample, by pure luck, can bee too good or too bad.

There are other cases, for example, the roulette, the roll of a die, or a fair coin toss, where the probability of occurrence is known in advance. In that case, it is quite easy to compute it.

The probability of an event happening is the number of ways that event can occur divided by the total number of cases. For example, the probability of obtaining a one in a die rolling is one divided by six, or 1/6. The probability of a seven to occur in a two dice rolling is six occurrences out of a total of 36 combinations. Thus one in six. The probability of a two-coin toss obtaining one head and one tail is two possible cases divided by four total combinations of head and tail, thus, 0.5 or 50%.

Fair odds

Fair odds is another quantity which gives information about the probability and comes from gambling. If a game is to be fair, each player should expect no advantage, no edge. Then, if the likelihood of the possible outcomes is different, the amounts to bet should be modified to compensate for this fact.

Let’s say the probability of one result is 2/3, then the probability of failure is 1 – 2/3 = 1/3. Thus, to make the game fair, for every dollar rewarded on the success, two dollars should be paid on the failure.

In general if P_success = p, then P_failure = 1-p, and the odds in favor are

p/(1-p) to 1.

Also, the odds against success are

(1-p)/p to 1.

Rules when Combining Probabilities

Addition Rule

Adding probabilities mean answering the OR question, such as “what are the odds of event A or B or C happening.”

For the addition rule, we have two cases.

Mutually exclusive events

With mutually exclusive events there is no overlap. If one event happens, the other events cannot occur. In this case, the probability of occurrence of A, or B, or C is the sum of the probabilities of each.
For example, what are the odds of getting an even number on a rolling die?
We know that there are three even numbers in a die: two, four, and six, each having 1/6th probability of occurrence. Thus the likelihood of getting an even number is 3 times 1/6 or 0.5.

Non-mutually exclusive events

If the events are not mutually exclusive, there can be overlap between them. This can be visualized in a Venn diagram. In that case, the probability of the overlap must be subtracted from the sum of separate events.
For Example, If one card is drawn from a 52-card deck, what is the likelihood the card is a Jack or Heart?

P_Jack = 4/52
P_Heart = 13/52
P_[Jack and heart] = 1/52
Then the answer is:
4/52 +13/52 – 1/52 = 16/52

The multiplication Rule

Multiplying probabilities answer the AND question, such as “what is the probability of A and B happening?
If the events are independent, then the occurrence of one event does not affect the appearance of the others. in this case, the odds of several events happening together is the product of their probabilities.
For example, what are the odds in a coin toss game of having two heads in a row?
We know the odds of each head is 0.5, then the odds of having two heads in a row is 0.5×0.5 = 0.25 or 25%.

To know the odds of an N losing streak of a trading strategy is rather easy: We just need to know the percent losers of a system, which is 1- Percent_winners, and multiply it by itself N times ( which is the exponential operator).
For example, which are the odds of obtaining eight losers in a row if the percent winners of my strategy are 45%?

Answer: If P_win = 0.45, then P_loss = 0.55.

P_8_Drawdown = 0.55^8 = 0.84%

If the events are not independent, we should use the conditional probability formula, but this is an advanced subject beyond the scope of this video.

Tags Education, Forex, Probability forex, probabilty theory

Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 2 – How To Maintain Control Of Your Private Keys!

Post author By Keiran
Post date 8 January, 2020
No Comments on Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 2 – How To Maintain Control Of Your Private Keys!

https://youtu.be/6qcyJf-iBTs

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 2/5

This part of the Coinbase exchange in-depth guide will focus on their wallet types and how they operate.
Coinbase users have the option to create three types of wallets: (regular) wallet, Vault, as well as a multi-sig vault. It also offers a USD wallet as well as a debit card that can access these wallets.

Coinbase (regular) wallet

Coinbase offers the option to create a regular wallet with them. However, the company controls your bitcoins as it holds your keys. Coinbase is a company backed by venture capitalists with over $100 million in funding. Even though the information is not public, it likely has an extremely strong security setup.
However, the whole point of Bitcoin is decentralization, and being in control of your money. Coinbase can shut your account down at any time, which would make you unable to access your funds. Make sure to transfer funds bought on Coinbase to a non-corporate wallet that lets you be in control of your own wallet keys.

Coinbase vault

Coinbase offers a new and unique solution for securing large amounts of cryptocurrency. It does it in the form of Vault accounts. Bitcoin stored in the Coinbase Vault account will be protected by multiple approvers added by him. Each approver must confirm the withdrawal validity before it processes.
All Vault withdrawals take 48-hours to process. The time delay acts as a safety net. However, the Vault suffers from the same downside as the regular wallet. You must trust Coinbase to secure the Vault funds, which can also be shut down by Coinbase terminating your account.

Multisig Vault

Coinbase understands that its users want complete control over their funds, which is only natural. Its multi-sig Vault is a so-called “2 of 3” wallet. Coinbase has one key, while the second key is shared. The third key is in the hands of the account holder. Any two keys can spend the account funds. If Coinbase suddenly goes down, you will still have both the shared and the private key. Funds cannot be withheld as the shared key is encrypted with your personal password.

Coinbase USD wallet

Coinbase also offers a USD wallet. A Coinbase USD wallet simply lets its users store dollars in your Coinbase account. This way:
You can store dollars in the Coinbase account, which can be extremely helpful when trying to buy crypto without having to wait on processing time.
You can spend Bitcoin on online purchases without ever exposing yourself to Bitcoin’s volatility.

Coinbase debit card

Though not a wallet per se, this overview wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Coinbase debit card. Coinbase has recently released a debit card for its UK customers. This debit card connects to your Coinbase account and uses the Coinbase balance. By using the account balance as a source of funds, it allows you to spend Bitcoin at any merchant that accepts Visa.

Tags coinbase, Crypto, Crypto Trading

Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

The Basics Of Statistical Analysis In Forex Part 1 – Understand Your Edge

Post author By Keiran
Post date 7 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/ZKjVY7lV04g

The Basics Of Statistical Analysis In Forex Part 1 – Understand Your Edge

Anyone interested in Forex trading needs a basic knowledge of statistics, and even the basic rules governing probabilistic calculation. Do not quiver yet. We promise you that this will be simple and entertaining, at the same time.

But why do we need all this?
A possible answer can be found in our latest video article “Why Knowing your Strategy parameters makes sense.” But, ultimately, because if you are serious about your profession as a trader, this is one essential ability to hold.

Basic terms we need to know

Probability: this area of math study involves predicting the likelihood of various outcomes. For instance, the possibility of your next trade is a winner. This mathematical area is a modern development of what early on was the mathematics of gambling. Probability theory is also related to the theory of errors, of which Pierre-Simon Laplace was the first to propose back in 1774 analytical formulas about the frequency of errors.

Statistics: We can define statistics as a collection of facts belonging to a collection of events, objects, or, more generally, a set. There are two kinds of statistics: Descriptive statistics try to describe a set in such a useful way. We can, for instance, describe a typical Englishman by its average height, weight, number of hours of sleep, the average income, the average number of males, and so on. Another type of statistics is “Inferential statistics” or statistical inference. Sometimes, it is not practical (or impossible) to measure all items produced by a process, such as on trading. Therefore, we take a sample of the whole data collection, and through it, try to infer general properties or forecast or approximate its future events.

Chance: We refer to chance if we know the event is uncertain to occur. Of course, if we see the event will always happen, for instance, the sunrise, the chance is 100 percent sure to occur. In trading, we use it in connection with the probability of a trade to be a winner or a loser. Generally, we refer to the chance of occurrence when we lack the specific knowledge for an event to happen. Still, we might infer its probability based on the previous events statistics.

Stochastic: When the chance is involved, the process is called stochastic or having stochastic relations. Stochastic is the opposite of deterministic. Newton’s Laws are deterministic. There is no element of chance involved. But practical measurements of objects following these laws involve some elements of chance since instruments have intrinsic errors and people measuring it also err.

Random: Random is an event that cannot be predicted. For instance, Nobody can predict the future price of an asset. Not even the price it will have the next mintute. A random sample is when every member of the set or collection has an equal probability of being chosen for the sample set. If some elements are more likely to appear then others, then this particular sample is not random. In trading, a random market is unpredictable. Is the noise of the price. Nobody can profit in a random market long term. But, sometimes, the market is a mix of randomness and bias or trend. In that case, traders who caught the trend can be profitable.

Tags Statistics

Crypto Videos

Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 1 – What They Do And Don’t Want You To Know

Post author By Keiran
Post date 6 January, 2020
No Comments on Coinbase Exchange In Depth Review Part 1 – What They Do And Don’t Want You To Know

https://youtu.be/eKza-SFtFC4

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 1/5

Coinbase is the world’s largest Bitcoin broker and is available to users in over 55 countries. Its customers can buy the desired amount of Bitcoin by using their bank account, debit card, SEPA transfer, Interac Online, as well as many other payment methods.

Coinbase’s PROs and CONs

Just like every other exchange, Coinbase has its pros and cons.
PROs:
High liquidity and high buying limits;
Ease of access to new users;
Instant buy option with a credit card as a backup.
CONs:
Limited payment methods;
Coinbase sometimes tracks users’ Bitcoin spendings.

Coinbase and safety

Coinbase is the world’s largest crypto exchange, so its reputation must be saying a thing or two about its safety. This San Francisco-based company is backed by trusted investors. It even offers FDIC insurance of up to $250,000 for cash that is held in their wallets.
Coinbase and payment methods
Coinbase’s interface is made easy to use and aims to make buying cryptocurrencies extremely simple and straightforward. The most popular payment methods, according to Coinbase customers, are credit and debit cards followed by bank transfers.

Coinbase offers support to over 55 countries. The payment methods available to you depend greatly on your country you are from. Its users can convert between cryptocurrencies regardless of where they are from but cannot always convert their local currency into cryptocurrency.

Payment Method
Countries
Funds Available
Currency
Fees*
Bank Transfer
USA
5-7 days**
USD
1.49%
Debit Card
USA
instant
EUR
3.99%
Debit Card
Canada
instant
CAD
3.99%
SEPA Transfer
Europe
1-3 days
EUR
1.49%
Debit Card
Europe
instant
EUR
3.99%
Debit Card
UK
instant
GBP
3.99%
Xfers Transfer
Singapore
instant
SGD
1.49%
Debit Card
Australia
instant
AUD
3.99%

Countries supported by Coinbase

Coinbase offers its brokerage services to customers that are from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Singapore. It offers support to the following European countries:
Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
Coinbase offers support to Canada, the USA, and Mexico in North America, while it only supports Chilean customers in South America.
Coinbase and privacy
Users are not exactly private on Coinbase, which many consider its biggest flaw. Its users must provide full identity verification as well as many personal details. When purchasing crypto with a credit card, Coinbase requires a picture of your driver’s license or passport.
Privacy is much better preserved when using a decentralized exchange. However, that comes with disadvantages as well.

Limits and liquidity

One of Coinbase’s advantages is its high limits. As an example, fully verified US customers have the option to buy $50,000 worth of Bitcoin daily. European customers, however, are allowed to have a maximum of €30,000 in their accounts.
The time for Bitcoin to be available for use depends greatly on the payment method as well as the country of origin.
In the United States, Debit Card purchases are instant once ID verification has been completed. As for Bank Transfers, the Bitcoin will be available five business days from placing an order. As for Canadian users, Canadian EFT purchases will take four days to complete, while Interac Online purchases are instant. European users that are paying with SEPA transfer will receive their Bitcoin within 1-3 business days.
For a more in-depth review of Coinbase, watch part 2 of our Coinbase Exchange in-depth guide.

Tags coinbase, Crypto, Crypto Trading

Forex Daily Topic Forex Videos

How To Succeed In Forex – Why Knowing your Strategy parameters makes sense

Post author By Keiran
Post date 6 January, 2020
No Comments on How To Succeed In Forex – Why Knowing your Strategy parameters makes sense

https://youtu.be/4sjtMeumna8

Why Knowing your Strategy parameters makes sense

Usually, traders’ interest focus on entries. Forecasting seems to them a crucial skill for succeeding in the Forex market, and they think other topics are secondary or even irrelevant. They are deadly wrong. Entries are no more than 10 percent of the success of a trader, while risk management and position sizing are crucial elements that the majority of traders discard as uninteresting. Let us show why risk can be such an exciting topic for people willing to improve in their trading job.

Making sure our strategy is a winner

There are two ways to trade The good one and the bad one. The good one is when the trader fully knows the main parameters of his system or strategy. The bad one is when not.
So, why do we need to know the parameters to be successful? The short answer is that it is
Firstly, to know if the system has an edge (profitable long-term).

Secondly, by knowing the parameters, we will know how much we can risk on each trade.
And thirdly, and no less important, by identifying these parameters, we can more easily define the monetary objectives and overall risk (drawdown).

Good, let’s begin!

The two main parameters of a strategy or system!

To fully identify a strategy, we need just two parameters. The rest of them can be derived from these two with or without the position size. The parameters in question are the percent of winning trades and the Reward-to-risk ratio.
Mathematical Expectancy (ME)
With these two parameters, we can estimate if the system is a winner or a loser using the following simple formula, defining the player’s edge: ME = (1 + A)*P -1

Where P is the probability of winning and A is the amount won. The formula assumes that A is constant since this formula came from gambling. Still, we can very much approximate the results is A is our average winning amount, or even better, the Reward-to Risk Ratio.

As an example let’s assume our system shows 45% winners with a winning amount two times its risk
ME = (1+2)*0.45 -1
ME = 0.35
The mathematical Expectancy (ME) expressed that way, shows the expected return on each trade per dollar risked. In this case, it is 35 cents per dollar risked.

Planning for the monetary objectives
Once we know ME, it is easy to know the daily and weekly returns of the strategy. To do it, another figure we should know, of course, the frequency of trades of the strategy. Let’s assume the strategy is used intraday on four major pairs delivering one trade per pair per day. That means, the system’s daily return (DR) will be 4XME dollars per day per dollar risked, while monthly returns (MR) will be that amount times 20 trading days:

DR = 4 x ME = 4 x 0.35 = 1.4
MR = 20xDR = 20 x 1.4 = 28

Therefore, a trader risking $100 per trade would get $2,800 monthly on average.
That is great! By defining our monthly objectives, once knowing ME and the number of trades the system delivers daily or monthly, we can determine the risk incurred. For example, another bolder trader would like to triple that amount by tripling the risk on each trade. Why not a ten-fold or a hundred-fold risk to aim for 280K monthly income?

Drawdown

That touches the dark side of trading, which is drawdown. Drawdowns are the result of the combination of the probability of losing of the trading system and the amount lost. Drawdowns are unavoidable because a system always shows losing streaks. Therefore, any trader must make sure that streak does not burn his trading account.

The risk of ruin increases as the trade size grows, so there is a rational limit to the size we should trade if we want to keep safe our hard-earned money.
As a basic method to be on the safe side, a trader must first decide how much of his account is willing to accept as drawdown, and from there, use as trade size a percent of the total balance which satisfies that condition of maximum drawdown.

Let’s do an example

Let’s say a trader using the previous strategy will not accept to lose more than 25 percent of his funds. As an approximation to this drawdown, we can think of a losing streak of 10 consecutive trades, an event with 0.35% probability of happening. Which is the trade size suitable to comply with these premises?
Trade Size = MaxDD% / 10
Trade Size = 25% / 10 = 2.5%
That gives us the reasonable trade size for this particular trader. If another trader is not willing to risk more than 10%, then his trade size should be 1%. Once this quantity is known, the trader only has to compute the dollar value by multiplying by the current balance.

Resetting the objectives

Let’s assume the balance is $5,000, then the max risk per trade allowed is $ 125. That means we could expect a monthly return of about $3,500 on the previously discussed strategy for a max drawdown of no more than 25%. If the trader would like to earn $7,000 instead, he should add another $5,000 to the account to guarantee a 25% drawdown or accept a 50% drawdown and risking $250.

Final words

Please, note that this is just an example and that sometimes the trade size is limited by the allowed leverage and other conditions. Also, note that trading the Forex market is risky. Therefore, please start slow. It is better to begin by risking 0.5% and see how your strategy develops and the drawdowns involved.

The first measure you must take is creating a spread-sheet annotating all your trades, including entry, exit, profit/loss, and risk per trade. Then compute your strategy parameters on a weekly basis. This is a serious business, and we should be making our due diligence and keep track of the evolution of our trade system or systems.

Tags Forex, forex education, parameters, risk, Strategy, trading

Crypto Videos

How To Save Money On Your Crypto Taxes – #taxbreakdown

Post author By Keiran
Post date 2 January, 2020
No Comments on How To Save Money On Your Crypto Taxes – #taxbreakdown

https://youtu.be/SEGIGKDAQSw

Prepare for the crypto tax season

Crypto traders are often wondering why they should file their crypto tax reports, given that most of their investments were lost in 2018. However, filing a tax report is required by law and those that do not file a report risk being audited by the IRS.
It is not yet tax season in the US, but it is always good to be prepared in advance. If you had some losses in 2019, you could utilize a few of the strategies we will present to minimize your overall tax liability. This will also potentially increase your tax refund.

Capital losses are deductible

Any losses from crypto trading can be deducted from your taxes. They can be used as a counter to any capital gains you made during that year, whether they come from crypto, stocks, or even real estate investments. If these capital losses outweigh the capital gains, then you can offset some other income sources, such as wages. However, this is allowed only up to $3000. However, one thing that people may not know is that the remaining losses past $3000 can be carried over to subsequent years. If you make gains in 2020, your 2019 losses can be used to offset those.

Accounting methods

In order to calculate your gains and losses, you will need to select an accounting method. The accounting method dictates which coins you are “selling” or “trading” if a lot of the same coins are accumulated over a period of time. These methods can be First-In-First-Out (FIFO), Last-In-First-Out (LIFO), Average Cost, and Specific Identification. FIFO would be the most conservative option to choose in most cases.

The chosen accounting method can have a tremendous impact on your overall tax liability. The best choice of the accounting method depends greatly on your transaction history. During a bull market, you may think that the LIFO method would give you the least amount of capital gains as you are trading only your most recently acquired coins. However, if FIFO is used, some of those coins could be categorized as long-term (held for >1 year), which would bring a lower tax rate when they are inspected. We highly recommend using tax software to calculate and compare your total gains and losses for each of the different accounting methods.

An example we will show will clarify how different methods have different outcomes. Imagine you bought 3 ASDF coins:

One coin in July 2018 for $2,000;
One coin in April 2019 for $7,000;
One coin in November 2019 for $5,000.

You sell 1 ASDF coin in December 2019 for $4k. We can use different accounting methods to determine tax liabilities.

FIFO: $4,000 – $2,000 (July 2018 cost basis) = $2,000 gain;
LIFO: $4k – $5k (November 2019 cost basis) = $1,000 loss;
Specific Identification: $4,000 – $7,000 (April 2019 cost basis) = $3,000 loss.

This simple example shows how different methods greatly affect the amount of tax you have to pay.

Tax-loss harvesting

What happens if you held your coins all throughout 2019 and lost some money? In that case, you have not realized any of your losses. This means that they can’t be used to deduct income or gains from other sources. However, you can use your newfound knowledge to come prepared for next year’s tax season. Specifically, utilizing a strategy called tax-loss harvesting may be a good option.

Tax-loss harvesting involves realizing losses by determining which coins to sell as well as the amount that should be sold. The easiest way to do this is certainly using crypto accounting software. This method could maximize your realized capital gains for 2020 and make a huge difference on the tax sheet come next year!

Conclusion

Taxes are certainly no fun, especially for crypto traders during long bear markets. However, they are a necessity. By using various strategies and tools, you can make your life way easier.

A picture of the example would be good to add.

Tags Crypto, Crypto Trading

Forex Videos

Steemit Economy Explained – One Of The Most Adopted Cryptocurrencies

Post author By Keiran
Post date 2 January, 2020
No Comments on Steemit Economy Explained – One Of The Most Adopted Cryptocurrencies

https://youtu.be/GH5_-zN0a_U

Steemit economy explained

Steemit has been one of the most used cryptocurrencies as well as the gateway to newcomers around the world. However, it’s fair to say that Steemit as a platform can be very confusing for newcomers. Steemit is one of the few cryptocurrency projects that is working as intended. It has seen mass adoption, even from outside the cryptocurrency space.

Steemit Currencies

Steemit consists of three currencies that make the Steemit economy.

Steem
Steem power
Steem dollar

This guide will try to explain how these cryptocurrencies work. Let’s explore Steemit currencies.

Steem

Steemit operates on its own blockchain. Its blockchain issues the Steem (STEEM) token, which is the unit of accounts of the Steem ecosystem. This token has two use cases:
It can be used by the Steemit economy to boost accounts’ Steem power.
It can be exchanged for Steem dollars (SBD).
The Steem token has the option to be traded on public exchanges such as Bittrex or Binance. Steem is the highly liquid component of the ecosystem. Steem power, as well as Steem dollars, derive their value from Steem’s value.

Steem Power

Steem Power is very similar to Steem, except for its actual use case. Steem power is locked and is meant to be a long-term asset. Your Steem can be converted to Steem Power in a process called ‘Power Up.’ It can also be converted back to steem in a process called ‘Power Down.’ The strength of the whole Steemit economy depends on this. Powering down is only possible for 1/104th of your steem power weekly.

Steem Power is held by many people as it has proven to be quite valuable. The more Steem Power a user has, the more influence they have over the Steem network. Their upvotes and comments will be worth more than those of people who have locked up less Steem Power.

The amount of Steem in supply doubles every year (which translates into 100% annual inflation). 90% of the new Steem gets distributed to the Steem Power holders.

Steem Dollar

The steem dollar (SBD) is Steemit’s attempt to bring stability to the cryptocurrency industry. The steem dollar can be considered a stablecoin and is meant to be worth roughly $1 at all times. A steem dollar is a transferable and convertible debt that can be transferred to an exchange or sold to someone else. Steem dollar is essentially a promise to pay one dollar’s worth of steem when converting back to steem tokens. Businesses are more comfortable accepting steem dollar due to its stability.

Steem dollars can be earned by publishing content on the Steemit platform. An author of the topic will receive both steem power and steem dollars as a reward for adding content to the platform.

All steem dollars can be redeemed at any time when its price is lower than $1. You will receive steem coins worth $1. The steem dollar exchanged will be destroyed. As there are fewer steem dollars circulating each time someone converts their SBT into steem tokens, the price of steem dollar constantly goes back to $1.

However, Steem Dollar is far from perfect. In December 2017, the price reached $12.

Conclusion
Steemit economy is trying to introduce cryptocurrency to people that didn’t know what it is through their very popular platform. Even though they had a few drawbacks, they still remain one of the most used cryptocurrencies in the world.

Tags Crypto, crypto analysis, Steemit

Crypto Videos

IEOs Explained Part 3 – Launch Your Own IEO Now!

Post author By Keiran
Post date 1 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/D-6REY8AO8g

IEO marketing – part 3/3

This is the third and final part of the IEO guide. It will continue by explaining what to look for when listing your IEO on the exchange.
Exchanges will not market your IEO

One of the main benefits of an IEO is that the exchange handles quite a few aspects of the token sale, like the KYC/AML requirements as well as payment processing. The exchanges also offer some marketing, but that is simply not enough to guarantee the success of the IEO. One thing that needs to be remembered is that you are not the top priority of any exchange. The chances are that, if an exchange is large enough, it has many IEOs running simultaneously. On top of that, they need to handle other aspects of their exchange and to market them.

The biggest marketer of your IEO should be none other than you and your team. No one knows your cryptocurrency project like you do, which means that you should play a big part in marketing your IEO. Whether that means having your internal marketing team or working closely with an expert crypto marketing company, all of the efforts made can only increase the chances of your IEO succeeding in reaching the goals set.

Make sure to prepare a budget for marketing. Professional marketing teams may charge you in the range of $50-100k per IEO. Most companies will expect to be paid up-front or in monthly payments. A promise of future profits no longer does the job well enough to secure an expert marketing team.

ICOs and STOs are not that much different from IEOs

There is no need to reinvent the wheel here! Much of what was true for marketing ICOs and STOs will also be true for IEOs.

You will need to be clear on whether your token is considered a utility or a security. Marketing should be done according to that.
You will have to contend with many advertising bans, such as Facebook advert bans and bans on other major networks.
You will need to create and engage with the crypto community, which means that your marketing team needs to be knowledgeable about cryptocurrency, the blockchain, and your project.

IEO marketing time-frame

Unlike ICOs which can run for multiple months, most IEOs only run for 1-2 months. This means that you have a much shorter time period of intensive marketing. You need to reach investors, provide them with all of the necessary information, and convince them to participate in your crowdsale in quite a short frame.

Take advantage of the hype

IEOs are a new fun thing in the cryptocurrency space, and everyone is talking about it right now. If you’re ready to launch your IEO, the worst thing you can do is wait. Don’t be afraid to ride the hype train. Try reaching out to cryptocurrency and financial news organizations with your personal insights on what it’s like to run an IEO, which may create even more traction. Look for interview opportunities that can bring exposure. Make sure to do anything and everything in your power to make sure that your voice is being heard. Your marketing plan should be much more aggressive than an ICO or STO marketing plan. The PR plan should be full of press releases, interviews, speaking engagements as well as any other ways of putting your face and name in front of potential investors.

The post-IEO phase

Just like with ICOs and STOs, the marketing should not stop after the crowdsale ends. If you are running multiple consecutive IEOs on different exchanges, you should consider diversifying your marketing. Investors that invested in your project on one exchange don’t want to be bombarded with requests to back you on some other exchange. On top of that, make sure to provide regular updates on development, new partnerships, and other major and minor milestones beyond the money you’re raising.

Hard work pays off

If you want your IEO to be successful, you’ll have to work hard. Preparation both in terms of the project development and marketing will differentiate you from the others. We’ll probably never see as big of hype around crowdfunding projects like the one we had in 2017. However, there are many opportunities for projects with a strong vision, a quality project, and a good marketing team.

Tags Crypto, cryptocurrencies, IEO

Crypto Videos

IEOs Explained Part 1 – The Death Of The ICO

Post author By Keiran
Post date 1 January, 2020
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https://youtu.be/pnuevvHipxM

IEO’s explained – part 1/3

This guide will explain the basics of IEOs as well as their benefits when compared to ICOs. It will also focus on the benefits of every party involved.

IEOs explained

The abbreviation “IEO” comes from Initial Exchange Offering. Its core concept is the same as with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). However, it is done on the website of a cryptocurrency exchange, which acts as a middle-man and conducts the sale itself. New digital currencies are sold to the public at a discounted price with ICOs. Its purpose is mainly raising money for a new project. In an IEO, however, everything takes place on the website of the exchange. The exchanges usually keep a small percentage of the token supply to themselves.

IEOs are considered the next new thing after ICOs and STOs. ICOs have stopped being as appealing to investors as before because of numerous scams and failed projects, as well as the lack of credibility of most of the ICOs. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance was one of the first exchanges that launched their IEO.

The most important thing when it comes to IEOs is that the exchange is at the forefront, which brings additional security to the offering. IEOs have the advantage of the exchange doing all the promotion and marketing, as well as managing the smart contracts of the IEO itself. It also ensures that the sale is legally compliant and follows all the KYC/AML processes.

IEO benefits

There are many benefits that IEOs have when compared to ICOs. The benefits of the three parties involved in the process will be considered separately.

The investors benefit from IEOs mostly in terms of the increased trust and security, which they do not have when investing in ICOs. The fact that the crypto exchanges are involved makes a significant difference. In order to maintain a good reputation with its clients and beyond, all exchanges will vet the projects that are launching IEOs. The exchange stands to benefit (or lose) from an IEO as well. Many exchanges tend to set too high of criteria for the funding rounds as they want to ensure that the IEO will succeed. This instantly brings more trust to the IEO space as this method removes a lot of scams. On top of that, investors don’t have to manage their transactions in order to exchange their funds. Exchanges are always supporting the IEO trading when the token is ready as it benefits the exchange as well.

The projects are also benefiting greatly from IEOs as the preparation and marketing processes become much easier than what they would be if the project launched an ICO. This is simply because the crowdfunding happens directly on the exchange’s platform, which means that the platform undertakes all of the promotion and marketing. This instantly solves the problem of trust as well as differentiates the project and makes it known. Also, the KYC/AML process and everything else that relates to making the sale legitimate is done by the exchange. Another advantage of projects that are doing IEOs is the immediate exchange listing, which is an increasingly difficult task nowadays.

Conclusion

IEOs are another form of project token offerings that certainly solves many problems that came with the ICOs. This type of offering will undoubtedly be used more and more in the world of cryptocurrencies.

Tags IEO

Forex Videos

IEOs Explained Part 2 – Why A IEO Is Right For You

Post author By Keiran
Post date 1 January, 2020
No Comments on IEOs Explained Part 2 – Why A IEO Is Right For You

https://youtu.be/I5ZqoqHCABw

IEO marketing – part 2/3

The concept of IEOs was quietly flying below the radar ever since December 2017. However, they have suddenly picked up a great deal of interest at the start of 2019. If an IEO is something you are considering for your cryptocurrency project, there are many questions you need to be answered. This is a guide on how to market an IEO and how it all works.

Not every IEO will succeed

The high-profile success of some recent IEOs has brought a certain amount of hype surrounding this new way of crowdsale. However, this is not 2017, and investors are not going to throw their money at a project just because it has the word “blockchain” in it. You will need to put some effort into marketing your IEO. On top of that, you may even need to run not one but multiple IEOs on several exchanges in order to meet your hardcap.

Setting yourself up for success

If you want your IEO project to be a success, you need to enter the market prepared. A polished whitepaper is considered a must-have in this day and age. The whitepaper should clearly explain the use-case for your project as well as why it needs to be on the blockchain.

People were used to investing in early-stage projects during the 2017 ICO hype. However, we have to say once more that this is not 2017. You should release, at the very least, an MVP. However, a product in beta stage or ready to launch is even better. This will not only help you attract more investors, but it will also help the exchange itself to determine whether they want to be a host to your IEO. Exchanges are looking for good teams that have already made and built something. After all, exchanges are putting their reputation at stake when hosting an IEO, and they do not want to host a project that does not have at least a part of the “product” finished.

The exchange also expects the project to have already recruited most or all of the required staff. They should be listed on your site and have your IEO project listed on their LinkedIn account.

Choosing an exchange

Your choice of exchange matters greatly. One of the main benefits of an IEO is that it gives you a ready-to-invest audience which is brought from the exchange in the form of its users. You will want to partner with an exchange that has a broad and user base of altcoin traders, as they are the ones that will be most interested in projects such as yours. However, larger exchanges usually have higher listing fees, so a balance needs to exist.

Make sure to at how the exchange has hosted previous or ongoing IEOs and if you like what they are doing. If you’re one of the first IEOs that the exchange will launch, what terms are they offering you? Do you have confidence in the exchange’s ability to oversee your IEO? The decision of which exchange to choose is crucial and should not be taken lightly. An exchange is the most critical partner in your IEO. A poor choice of exchange could hurt your project as much or even more as a poor choice in CEO or lead developer. Choose an exchange that you are confident in and excited to work with.

Tags Crypto, IEO

Forex Videos

The Best Forex Pairs To Trade And Why #liquidity

Post author By Keiran
Post date 31 December, 2019
No Comments on The Best Forex Pairs To Trade And Why #liquidity

What are the best pairs to trade?

When trading currencies, it is only possible to do so in pairs. And where each currency has a floating exchange rate relative to any other countries’ currency, which is paired against trading purposes. The fact that each currency floats, or falls and rises against the value of another currency, is the reason that foreign exchange trading has grown to be one of the biggest businesses on the planet, with a daily turnover of over 5 trillion dollars.

This volume of money in the system, which is driven by supply and demand, causes the liquidity which is responsible for the continuous fluctuations in exchange rates, and what essentially drives the market. It is also a key factor for traders. Because without it, exchange rates would barely move, and it would be almost impossible to trade from a technical point of view.

And so, if we understand that volume equals liquidity and that this means potential movements in exchange rates, we should essentially be looking for the main currencies that drive the forex market because that is where we will make our money. Technical traders need currency pairs that rise and fall, and not remain flat.

The countries which have the strongest economies are also responsible for having the most significant amount of volume and, therefore, market liquidity in respect of their currencies.
These countries are the United States and its Dollar, Great Britain and its Pound, Australia with its Dollar, the European Union and their Euro, Japan, and its Yen and Switzerland with their Franc. Their respective currencies are known in the industry as the Majors.

In terms of the biggest market segment traded in pairs on a daily basis, it usually follows that the EUR/USD is the most liquid, with over 20% of all transactions, and then the USD/JPY, the GBP/USD and USD/CHF. Of course, this can change depending on supply and demand. And where this varies depending on economic and fundamental events.

Forex Traders look for volatility and price action that is continually moving, and this tends to happen most with the Major currency pairs. Another advantage with trading the Majors is that the spreads, or the difference between the bid and ask price, is typically much smaller with these pairs. And because of the greater volume, it means less slippage, and that means that trading them is easier and more reliable when entering and exiting.

But the most important thing about trading the Major pairs is that they offer a great deal of reliability when it comes to using technical analysis to trade them.
Here at Forex.Academy, we are able to cover all of your educational needs, which will help you get ahead with your trading.

Tags Forex, Forex Majors, trading

Forex Videos

Mastering Forex – Trading The Euro US Dollar Pair

Post author By Keiran
Post date 30 December, 2019
No Comments on Mastering Forex – Trading The Euro US Dollar Pair

https://youtu.be/0uHHOGJH3Ts

Trading The Euro US Dollar Pair

Of the Forex Major pairs, the EUR/USD has generally been considered the most liquid, with over 20% of all transactions, followed by the USD/JPY, the GBP/USD, and USD/CHF. But this can change, depending on supply and demand.
In fact, the EURUSD pair seems to have dried up considerably in recent months. Where a couple of years ago, it would not have been unusual to see the pair ranging over 150 pips per day. More recently, it has been fairly common to see a sideways range of under 20 pips!

So what on earth is going on with the Euro? It is important to consider all of the economies that make up euroland, the most significant of which is the mighty powerhouse of Germany, which largely props up the smaller nations such as Greece and Italy who have been struggling with their economies over recent years. It is also important to note that Germany has also been struggling with manufacturing output, especially within the car industry, and where it’s gross domestic product has been shrinking and causing its economy to stagnate, although it has been staving off an overall recession. Coupled with this, the uncertainty which has prevailed regarding Brexit, many hedge funds and investment firms, and even central banks will have been reeling over all of the uncertainties that are going on in Euroland and the general decline of global growth. And so they have been standing on the sidelines or trading other assets. It also has to be said that the economist and former President of the European Central Bank between 2011 and 2019, Mario Draghi, had – what the market perceived as – a cautious and somewhat dovish stance towards the Euro area. However, Christine Lagarde, who takes over the role, has been largely welcomed by the financial markets and where some positive light seems to suggest a slight recovery in the economic fortunes of the Euro area, which have to lead to a stronger Euro in recent days.

Brexit still remains a hurdle for Euroland and until the matter is fully resolved the Euro faces a lack of direction and is ripe for some strong moves in either direction, although some large institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, suggest an uptrend to the 1.15 level for the EURUSD is on the cards. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

But the bottom line is that, when traded with a little extra caution, while waiting for extra volume induced breakouts, the EURUSD pair is still a market favorite among traders and is probably the most reliable pair to trade via technical analysis. At some stage, it is highly likely that Forex volumes, which have generally been lower in the market this year, will return. At which point the EURUSD should see a return to volatility. Here at Forex.Academy, we have some great trade sets up explanations for all the Major pairs in our Forex Video library, and they are all freely available for your educational needs.

Tags Forex, forex education, trading

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency Exchanges – Beginners Edition

Post author By Keiran
Post date 20 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency Exchanges – Beginners Edition

https://youtu.be/WIUb8AMhY8w

Cryptocurrency exchanges – beginners edition
What are cryptocurrency exchanges?

Cryptocurrency exchanges are platforms that offer their users to buy, sell, or exchange cryptocurrencies for other digital currencies or fiat currencies like the US dollars or Euro. Crypto enthusiasts that want to trade professionally will most likely need to use an exchange that requires ID verification and opening an account. On the other hand, if you just want to make an occasional trade, there platforms that don’t require an account or any form of verification.

Things to look out for before joining an exchange
It’s important to do a little research before you start trading on a specific exchange. These are a few things that you should check before making your first trade on an exchange:
Reputation – Exchanges are extremely public, which means that the best way to find out if an exchange is legit is to search the reviews from individual users as well as well-known industry websites. On top of that, you can ask any questions regarding these exchanges on forums such as BitcoinTalk or Reddit.

Fees

Most exchanges have an information page on their websites, which lists the exchange fees. Before joining any specific exchange, make sure you understand what the deposit, transaction, and withdrawal fees are. Fees may differ substantially from one exchange to another.

Payment Methods

Exchanges can differ greatly in terms of what payment methods they support. They can accept credit & debit cards, wire transfer, PayPal, etc. If an exchange has limited payment options, it may not be as convenient for everyone to use. Purchasing cryptocurrencies through a credit card will always require an ID check. It will also come with a premium price since credit cards carry a higher transaction and processing fees. Purchasing cryptocurrency via a wire transfer will take more time as it takes time for banks to process.

Verification Requirements

The majority of trading platforms and exchanges require some sort of an ID check in order to make deposits & withdrawals. However, some exchanges will allow you to remain anonymous. The verification can take up to a few days, but it protects you from most forms of fraud.

Geographical Restrictions

Exchanges may offer their services to the whole world or just a part of it. Some specific user functions may only be accessible from certain countries. Make sure the exchange of your choice allows full access to all platform tools and functions to the residents of your country.

Exchange Rate

Exchanges may vary slightly in exchange rates. Shopping around may save you a lot of money in the long term. It’s not uncommon to see the rates fluctuate up to 10% between exchanges, as the prices are dictated by the supply and demand of that particular exchange.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency exchanges are a valuable addition to the cryptocurrency space, which would not function efficiently without them. However, not all exchanges are made equal. Make sure to check every aspect of an exchange before deciding to join and trade on it.

Tags Crypto, Crypto exchange, cryptocurrencies, trading

Forex Videos

Forex Trading Psychology Part 3 – Winner’s Have To Learn To Lose

Post author By Keiran
Post date 20 December, 2019
No Comments on Forex Trading Psychology Part 3 – Winner’s Have To Learn To Lose

https://youtu.be/1einwnNxdrM

Get your head straight Session Three

In sessions one and two, we talked about the importance of having a quiet working environment, at least two 15 inch or larger computer screens, and keeping up to date with economic data releases. And also to be realistic and not expect every trade to be a winner.
The one area of trading that hardly any new trader takes into consideration is the emotional roller coaster that the stresses of trading can cause a person to go through. When it comes to trading with real hard cash, winning trades can be quite euphoric, especially when a trader starts to see consistent winning trades ramping up their profit and loss. However, losing trades, or going into a drawdown, can cause a lot of stress and anxiety during trading. When traders let losing trades run overnight, it can cause sleepless nights. We all know that our performance will suffer when we do not sleep properly. A lack of sleep can cause poor judgment when it comes to trading.

And so when it comes to trading, people must ask themselves in the first instance; am I the type of person who can handle being on an emotional roller coaster? There is nothing quite like trading when it goes your way and where you are making money consistently. But when it goes wrong, the stress piles on and causes you to make more and more mistakes. You might have a natural inclination to double up when suffering losing trades because most people will chase losses. This is a fairly natural phenomenon, but it is gambling and not trading.
Professional traders set stop losses, so they will know what their losses are going to be on every trade and do not let losses run on and on, they only do that with their winning trades.
Losses can cause traders to feel frustrated and angry, and quite often, they may feel that they want to do nothing and hope that a bad will position will come back online. This is called burying your head in the sand and not facing the consequences of your actions.
The absolute best way to mitigate these issues, in order to keep your emotions in check, is to invest your time in Forex education. Because the more you know about this market, the less likely you are to make mistakes. Here at Forex.Academy, we have all the educational modules you will need, and they are freely available at your disposal.

Tags Crypto, Forex, Forex psychology, trading

Crypto Videos

Token Swap Explained Part 4 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

Post author By Keiran
Post date 19 December, 2019
No Comments on Token Swap Explained Part 4 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

https://youtu.be/K0mmHwEH2ro

Token swap explained – part 4

This is the final part of the token swap series. For more explanation, check the previous parts.

Tier 3 Exchanges – explanation

We have analyzed the trading volumes of the 13 coins that were listed on Tier 3 exchanges. The graphs below show the data that focuses solely on the daily trading volume generated by the Tier 3 exchanges. The volume is clearly minuscule and has no impact on price discovery. If we take a look at the data, only EOS has respectable liquidity on these exchanges. Other projects have low volumes on these exchanges, which makes the listing on the exchange virtually worthless.

Exchanges VS. Token Swaps

This pie chart below highlights the category of exchanges each coin was listed on. The majority of the coins (84% to be precise) are listed on Tier 3 exchanges.

A few things can be concluded from the analysis:
Tier 1 exchanges are extremely picky when listing tokens. If a project is not following the ERC20 standard, they need to have a big brand name or to be ready to pay a hefty “fee” for listing their currency on the Tier 1 exchange.
84% of native tokens managed to list their tokens only on Tier 3 exchanges. Another 11% managed to list their tokens on Tier 2 exchanges.

Tier 1 VS. Tier 2 Exchanges

If we take a look at the average daily trading volume on the three exchange ranks, we can see that the:

• Average Daily Trading Volume of Tier 1 exchanges (6) = $129,342,307
• Average Daily Trading Volume of Tier 2 exchanges (12) = $22,659,579
• Average Daily Trading Volume of Tier 3 exchanges (92) = $2,495,216

Even though the average trading daily volume of Tier 3 exchanges is well over $2 million, this number is significantly lower as many of these exchanges are engaged in fake trading. We can also see that there is a massive difference in volume when we compare Tier 1 and Tier 2.
It is significantly cheaper and faster to list the token on Tier 2 exchanges, which can provide the necessary liquidity to the token. On top of that, having a decent daily trading volume in Tier 2 pushes Tier 1 exchanges to list the token much faster and cheaper.

Conclusion

Many projects launched their projects using the ERC20 standard as it provided the necessary speed as well as the ability to raise funds quickly. It also provided a more accessible pathway to list the token on exchanges as almost all exchanges support ERC20 tokens. The challenge comes when these projects want to launch their main-net and conduct a token swap, which transforms their ERC20 token into their native token.
This part of the article focused on one of the reasons why the native token price fades away, which is the inability to list their tokens on Tier 1 exchanges. Most of the native tokens could not get listed on Tier 2 exchanges. The data shows an immediate and long-term negative impact token liquidity and pricing after the token swap.

Tags Crypto, cryptocurrencies, EOS, Token swap

Forex Videos

Forex Trading Psychology Part 2 – Winner’s Have To Learn To Lose

Post author By Keiran
Post date 19 December, 2019
No Comments on Forex Trading Psychology Part 2 – Winner’s Have To Learn To Lose

https://youtu.be/0ZOUpTZl-cE

Trading Psychology – Get your head straight – Session Two

In session one, we discussed the importance of having a quiet working environment with as few as possible distractions, and at least two 15-inch or larger computer screens to help you assimilate all the information from your charting. And of course, to be up to speed when it comes to economic data releases and to understand how these might impact your trading. All of which are critical components of trading psychology.
OK, so you have planned your time, banished friends, family, kids, and other distractions from your work area. Now what? Well, another area where new Traders typically fall down he’s being unrealistic when it comes to trading losses — everybody loses trades at some point. But in forex trading, you really should be taking a long-term view. The best traders work to averages, they look for more wins than losses, and where any losses are contained by sensible stop losses, and where winning trades will typically run on for at least two times greater than any losses would be allowed to run for.

Some of the best traits of professional traders are the consistency of trading methodology while looking at the long game and not the short game, and being disciplined. When discipline fails – which is largely down to stress – then trading breaks down and fails too.
Another area where traders fail is due to greed, where they hang on to winning trades for too long, and try and squeeze every last pip out of their trade, which often leads to price action reversals and where trades move against them. This often results in traders going from a position of profit, to then running the position into negative territory, simply because they would not take a profit when they had it, because they wanted more. Professional traders know when to get out of a trade and do not let winning trades go into negative territory, even if they need to exit the trade with a small profit. They simply wait for the next trade setup up and go again.
Here at Forex.Academy, we have a full suite of educational tools to help you to become a professional currency trader, and they are all freely available on our website!

Tags Forex, Forex psychology, trading

Crypto Videos

Token Swap Explained Part 3 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

Post author By Keiran
Post date 18 December, 2019
No Comments on Token Swap Explained Part 3 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

https://youtu.be/N-aoGwbXuMY

Token swap explained – part 3

Part 3 of this series is focused on the token price impact after their token swap.

A deep dive into the price analytics, both pre and post swap, shows that unless the token has incredibly strong brand recognition as well as a significant market cap, it will not attract investors’ and exchanges’ attention.

Out of the 15 projects that were reviewed, only one token improved in token price. The remaining 14 tokens lost their value from when they conducted their token swap.
There are several reasons that affected their price negatively. One of the major reasons was that almost none of them managed to list their native token on a Tier 1 exchange. Native tokens seem to be significantly more difficult to list on Tier 1 exchanges than what most projects thought.
We researched 13 tokens from the previous article, which include:
EOS;
Tron;
Icon;
Aion;
Binance Coin;
Augur
VeChain;
PundiX;
IOST;
Tomochain;
Mithril;
Zilliqa;

CyberMiles Token.
Only two of the tokens (WeOwn (CHX) and Matrix AI) have yet to list their native token on a new exchange since their token swap.
We tracked the exchanges that listed the tokens, which can be seen below.

In total, 110 exchanges agreed to list these 13 native tokens after their token swap. We managed to categorize these exchanges into three tiers: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. This classification is made based on the average daily trading volume of each exchange.

Categorization:
Tier 1 Exchanges: Exchanges that exceed the daily trading volume of $70 Million;
This category includes only nine exchanges: Binance, Coinbase Pro, Huobi Global, UpBit, Kraken, Bitfinex, Bitsamp, Kucoin, and HitBTC.
Tier 2 Exchanges: Exchanges that range between $15–70 Million;
This category includes 31 exchanges such as Okex, Bithumb, Bitforex, Coinone, Bittrex, etc.
Tier 3 Exchanges: Exchanges which have their daily trading volume below 15 Million;
These exchanges include FCoin, BiBox, CoinBene, etc. Some of these exchanges reported their daily volume to be non-existent.

Tags Crypto, Crypto exchange, Crypto Trading, cryptocurrencies, Exchange, Token swap

Crypto Videos

Token Swap Explained Part 2 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

Post author By Keiran
Post date 17 December, 2019
No Comments on Token Swap Explained Part 2 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

https://youtu.be/IovIe2iFrAA

Token swap explained – part 2

Selling before or after the token swap
From the 20 projects that were included in the research, we compared the results:
Group 1: This group is comprised of the native tokens that were listed on exchanges as soon as the token swap happened.
Group 2: This group included the projects where there were, or still are, delayed by the exchanges as far as listing their native token goes.

For a token swap to be fruitful, exchanges that already list the ERC20 token needs to support the token swap. They also need to confirm the date of listing the native token. Group 1 and Group 2 differ in terms of how exchanges value them. It’s critical that the project management team has a good relationship with the exchanges as well as with their community.

If an exchange does enable trading of a native token after the token swap, the token holders are effectively holding a non-tradable token. This situation is further exacerbated when a larger percentage of tokens did not participate in the token swap and continues to trade on the exchange.

Side-by-Side Comparison

We have compared 15 projects as well as their token price over four time-frames: 24 hours, three days, seven days, and 30 days after the token swap date. The projects that were included in the comparison were as follows

The two most successful token swaps so far were EOS and VeChain. EOS, which is currently the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, increased its price by 26.4% in the first 24 hours, 17.5% after three days, and 12.7% after seven days of its token swap.

VeChain was almost as successful, recording a 23% gain in the first 24 hours, 22.6% gain in the first three days, and 3.4% in the first seven days following its token swap.
Both of the projects had their native token immediately listed on an exchange. On the other hand, the success level of these two projects was also determined by the marketing hype surrounding them. EOS’s ICO was the biggest in the history of the cryptocurrency space. As an ERC20 token, EOS got listed on 34 cryptocurrency exchanges. The token swap was immediate, and the tokens were frozen as soon as the main-net launched.

Vechain’s intention of boosting transparency and product management in the supply chain sector generated a lot of interest from shipping companies as well as other businesses in the industry. The token swap was allowed for six weeks. Vechain got listed on 26 exchanges prior to its token swap. On top of that, 19 of them participated in the token swap process.
Some of the tokens performed negatively, as well. These projects are Cybermiles and Mithril. They are less popular in the crypto space, which undoubtedly contributed to their lack of success. EOS, as an example, plunged by 28% 30 days after its token swap. This result implies that the positive impact of the token swap wore off, and the general market conditions affected the price performance.

EOS, Tron, Icon, Vechain, AION, CHX, as well as Pundi X, went through a token swap in 2018. During 2018, the most prominent names are Binance, Zilliqa, and IOST.

Conclusion

The stated purpose of this research was to identify if investors should sell before or after the token swap. The research showed that the tokens returned to their regular price after some time, which means that any potential price benefit should be looked at from a shorter time-frame.

Token price 3 Days after the token swap

Looking at EOS and VeChain, one can note that they both had considerable brand recognition at the time of the token swap. After removing both EOS and VeChain from the 3-day results above, the calculations show that the potential gain of a few percents is undoubtedly not worth the risk of engaging in a token swap.

Tags Token swap

Forex Videos

Forex Trading Psychology Part 1- Winner’s Have To Learn To Lose

Post author By Keiran
Post date 17 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/WwZJSl_sNFU

Trading Psychology – Get your head straight – Session Two

In session one, we discussed the importance of having a quiet working environment with as few as possible distractions, and at least two 15-inch or larger computer screens to help you assimilate all the information from your charting. And, of course, to be up to speed when it comes to economic data releases and to understand how these might impact your trading. All of which are critical components of trading psychology.
OK, so you have planned your time, banished friends, family, kids, and other distractions from your work area. Now what? Well, another area where new Traders typically fall down he’s being unrealistic when it comes to trading losses. Everybody loses trades at some point. But in forex trading, you really should be taking a long-term view. The best traders work to averages, they look for more wins than losses, and where any losses are contained by sensible stop losses, and where winning trades will typically run on for at least two times greater than any losses would be allowed to run for.

One of the biggest areas where new traders fall down is by not applying sensible stop losses, and then getting closed out by their broker due to a margin call. Or traders will simply throw the towel in when they have gone through the pain barrier, and then immediately double the size of subsequent trades in order to chase their losses in order to try and make money back. This is typically how gamblers operate, and of course, when it comes to gambling, the house generally always wins. Some of the best traits of a professional trader is the consistency of trading methodology while looking at the long game and not the short game, and being disciplined. When discipline fails – which is largely down to stress – then trading breaks down and fails too.

Another area where traders fail is due to greed, where they hang on to winning trades for too long, and try and squeeze every last pip out of their trade, which often leads to price action reversals and where trades are moving against them. This often results in traders going from a position of profit, to then running the position into negative territory, simply because they would not take a profit when they had it, because they wanted more. Professional traders know when to get out of a trade and do not let winning trades go into negative territory, even if they need to exit the trade with a small profit. They simply wait for the next trade setup up and go again.

Here at Forex.Academy, we have a full suite of educational tools to help you to become a professional currency trader, and they are all freely available on our website!

Tags Forex, Forex psychology, trading

Forex Videos

Token Swap Explained Part 1 – How To Know If A Token Is Profitable

Post author By Keiran
Post date 16 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/pz4ei6EnUZY

Token swap explained – part 1

Many projects launched on the Ethereum network using its ERC20 protocol in 2017 and 2018. Some of the projects that did subsequently scheduled token swaps into their native tokens as their blockchain got ready for the market. These tokens started using ERC20 for several reasons:
Ease of use as well as the speed to launch;
Access to investors’ funds during the ICO bull market; Exchange Listings: All of the exchanges could instantly list the token without any trouble;
ERC20 tokenization is far less risky for everyone involved as the tokens are following the same standard.

ERC Tokens

Besides the famous ERC20 tokens, the Ethereum network also offers other types of tokens, such as:
ERC223: This network protocol allows its users to send tokens to either their wallet or contract using the same transfer option. This eliminates the potential for confusion as well as lost tokens. Examples of projects that use ERC223 include ChainLink (LINK) and ShineCoin (SHC);
ERC721: This standard is usually used for non-fungible tokens such as Decentraland (MANA) and 0X Protocol (ZRC);
ERC621: This token standard extends the ERC20 function and allows projects to modify the total supply of the created tokens;
ERC 1155: This standard enables developers to issue multiple types of tokens. They can be fungible, non-fungible as well as semi-fungible.
Other token standards include ERC735, ERC865, ERC725, ERC1400, etc. (They all serve a different purpose but extend the use of ERC20 and ERC721 tokens)

What is a token swap?

A token swap represents a process where a cryptocurrency transfers to another blockchain at a set rate. These token swaps usually occur when a cryptocurrency project launches its own blockchain and wishes to transfer its tokens from another blockchain (like Ethereum) to its new one. Some blockchains don’t have their own platform but instead decide to move their tokens to another platform. One example of such a coin is Mithril (MiTH), which moved from Ethereum to Binance Chain. After the token swap, the ETH, which was used to pair the tokens, is usually removed from exchanges.

Token Price Influences

This guide tried to show when is the best time to buy or sell these tokens during their timeline.
It’s also important to note that external forces do have a significant impact on the outcomes of a token swap. These factors include bull and bear market stages, the quality of the project’s marketing and communication, its duration, budget as well as success at attracting enthusiasts. These factors can also include the number as well as the relative quality of the exchanges that agreed to list the ERC20 token. If and how these exchanges support the token swap, and the enabled native token trading plays a significant role in the token’s life. On top of that, the token’s liquidity, market cap, and more factors influence the outcome of the token swap.
The primary driver that dictates the token price success seems to be:
Will the exchange support the token swap;
Will the exchange list the new native token;
The time of listing the native token.
Other factors certainly influence projects positively or negatively. However, that is left to the trader to decide.

Tags Crypto, Crypto Pick, Crypto Trading, Token swap

Forex Videos

Forex Leading and Lagging Indicators – which Is Better & What Do They Do

Post author By Keiran
Post date 16 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/xBZdIh4GtSw

Technical Analysis; The Difference Between Leading and Lagging Indicators

When it comes to technical analysis, there are literally dozens of indicators which are available to traders. Choosing the right one for you will depend on your trading style and methodology. Most new traders will go through a process of trial and error when it comes to choosing the correct technical indicators for them. However, it is critical that you know how they work and how they can affect your trading.

Technical indicators are tools and fall into two brackets: leading and lagging indicators. Lagging indicators capture the movements of historical price action data and plots this information onto a chart screen. Traders decipher the patterns and then use it to determine entry and exit points by accessing if a pair is overbought and likely to fall, all or if it oversold and likely to rise, or if it is sideways trading.

Example A

Example ‘A’ is an example of a lagging indicator; the Moving Average Convergence Divergence or MACD takes the average move of historical price action over a set period of time and plots the information onto a chart. In this chart of the GBPUSD pair with the 5-minute time frame, we can see that the price action of the pair is very similarly reflected in the MACD with its moving average, which both fluctuate around its 0 axes. Traders use the imagery to back up their theory of future price action.

Example B

Example ‘B,’ on the same pair and time frame, is of another lagging indicator, the Stochastic oscillator, which plots historical price action data and tells a trader when a pair is entering into overbought territory such as above the 80-line and when a pair maybe oversold such as below the 20-line. Again, traders use the data to help predict future reversals in price.

Example C

Example C, again on the same GBPUSD, a chart, is a simple moving average lagging indicator, which plots the average move of the previous price action, where, in this case, a continuous line is formed onto the chart of the average of the previous 14 candlesticks. As we can see, when price action falls underneath the moving average, it tends to trend lower, and it is also easy to identify on this chart that when price action moves above the moving average, a tren higher follows.

Example D

Example D is price action itself on the same chart as defined by our Japanese candlesticks, and where the price action itself is a leading indicator. Leading indicators are the most widely used by professional traders to help anticipate future price movements and help to define entry and exit points with much greater accuracy the lagging indicators. When traders use price action in the form of candlesticks, they study the size shape and patterns of the candlesticks to predict future movements.

Example E

Example E, on the same chart, is another leading indicator. These are support and resistance lines, Which Traders will draw onto the grass themselves at ware price action tends to find support which it is likely to move up from and resistance where the price is likely to fall from, in order to decipher future price action. As you will see from our screen-shot, these lines will often alternate between being levels of support and levels of resistance due to price action retracement.

Example F

Example F is another leading indicator. This is a screenshot from a forex broker’s clients’ positions table, which shows the net positions of how their traders are positioned on various currency pairs. Many brokers now offer this superb facility which will give traders added comfort when it comes to taking on trades, or act as a warning if the majority of traders on the position table are trading in the opposite direction.

Tags Education, Technical Analysis, trading

Forex Videos

The Best Cryptocurrencies To GPU Mine In 2020 – Part 3

Post author By Keiran
Post date 15 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/5kMCXQFjmKg

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 3

The third part of this series will be devoted to the smaller cryptocurrencies, which might deserve a spotlight in the world of crypto mining. These cryptocurrencies are much more unstable due to the lack of liquidity but are still worth mentioning. Make sure to do the research and choose cryptocurrencies to mine based on your beliefs and calculations.

Pirl (PIRL)

Pirl is a relatively small community-based decentralized cryptocurrency. However, it is interesting as it introduced the world to the first Ethash-based Masternode. Pirl’s potential use case of a decentralized currency, as well as applications and governance platform, is by no means a small task to achieve. Pirl is often mistaken for Ethereum as people may think it intends to do the same thing as Ethereum did.
People that want to mine Pirl can do so using their GPUs by utilizing Pirl’s Ethash proof of work algorithm. Pirl rewards 6 PIRL as block reward every 10 seconds.NVIDIA cards, as well as AMD cards, are the recommended GPUs for PIRL mining.

Metaverse (ETP)

Metaverse is a decentralized public blockchain that originates from China. It aims to facilitate a low-cost transfer of identities as well as digital assets and properties. A project like this has a long way to go until it reaches success, and its chance of succeeding is arguably small. However, Metaverse is a fun project, which is why it’s mentioned in this guide. People that want mine ETP can do using their GPUs. Metaverse uses the Ethash algorithm, which, in this case, rewards 2.5 ETP as a block reward every 30 seconds.
NVIDIA and AMD cards are, once again, the recommended GPUs for ETP Mining.

Expanse (EXP)

Expanse- is a platform that offers blockchain as a service, just like Ethereum does. It supports smart contracts and DApps that focus on identity, equity, philanthropy, gamification as well as governance. Its cryptocurrency’s ticker is EXP, which is based on the Ethash proof of work algorithm. Once again, Expanse is easily minable with GPUs.
Many serious value miners that have a future expectation of price appreciation in mind took a look at this coin. However, its lack of liquidity is something that stops current profitability miners from investing their time and resources in this project. Expanse’s block time is 45 seconds, and its reward generates 4 EXP per block.
NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards are recommended for EXP mining.

Conclusion

The path towards the biggest profits, in the long run, includes mining a moderately profitable cryptocurrency that has a chance of appreciating in the future. That way, a miner can amass a more significant amount of the currency before it becomes oversaturated with other miners, while still being able to cash out when needed. The hash rate will remain reasonably low until other miners pick it up. By then, however, you would have already mined some amount of the cryptocurrency of your choice.
Whether you are a current profitability miner or a value-driven miner at the moment, this guide should have shown some interesting cryptocurrencies to potentially mine or take a deeper look into.

Tags Crypto, crypto mining, cryptocurrencies

Forex Videos

Bonus Brokers Are For Jokers – Forex Bonus Debunked

Post author By Keiran
Post date 13 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/jHTO0BEy4xs

Bonus Brokers Are For Jokers – Forex Bonus Debunked

The number of retail forex brokers is growing year on year. Currently, there are over 1300 of them out there, all vying for the business of the estimated 9.6 million online traders.
Just like the majority of food retailers who offer loss-leading products to get buyers into their stores, retail forex brokers know they have to offer incentives to get traders on their books. Typically, forex brokers will offer inducements such as sign-on bonuses, commission rebates, no deposit bonuses, and the offer of cash rewards when certain targets are hit by traders. Some also offer demo account trading competitions with prize money on offer to the most successful traders. And of course, all of these are subject to the company’s terms and conditions.

One of the most common types of inducements is a $25 – $50 account opening bonus, where new accounts are credited with $25 or $50 after an application has been accepted, and where traders can commence trading having not deposited any money, and where they get to keep any winnings on the account, suffer no losses, but they do not get to keep the $25 or $50 bonus. This is just a simple tool to offer free margin and get traders out of the starting blocks and up and running.

Another type of inducement looks – on the face of it – to be far more generous and goes something like this: the trader deposits funds of $10,000 and is offered a 10% cash bonus on successful opening and closing of 200 standard lots. This sounds great until you actually drill down a little more into the offer because 200 lots equate to approximately 2000 mini lot trades of $1 per pip, or 1000 of $2 per pip, which is fairly typical of new retail traders.
Therefore, if you traded 5 x $1 mini lots per day, it would take 400 days or over 13 months to turn over the equivalent of 200 lots at that rate! Coupled with that, some such brokers will have a clause that stipulates that there should not be a drawdown on the account of more than 20%. So, who is likely to ever see this bonus? Well, certainly none of the 70% of retail traders who statistically lose all of their deposited funds in the first six months. And of the other 30%, let’s say about 5% might be good enough to achieve the above criteria.

Because of the high turnover of retail traders, and the growing number of emerging brokers, there will always be similar offers from brokers going around to keep new traders coming onto their books, while the losers are going off. It’s a simple marketing ploy to try and mitigate client loss with new sign-ups.

But in real terms, the brokers are offering very little. Essentially, of the above examples, you do not get to keep the $25 or $50, and it means your trading leverage only allow you to trade a few cents per pip, and as for the $1000+ cash bonus, well it really is a commission or spread rebate in sheep’s clothing. But hey- it is advertised as a bonus, and if you can meet the criteria, it is certainly worth having. And so when we take out all these bells and whistles, what is left? Well, the following are the most important issues new traders should really be worrying about, and here are some questions that they should be asking their prospective broker:

Are they an ECN broker who passes trade orders on to third parties, or, will you be trading against the broker, which is what most spread betting firms do? Do they offer tight spreads and instant execution with low latency and low slippage? Do they charge a commission on top of their spreads? If yes, do these commissions, when added to the spread, equate to an average all-in spread of around $1 per pip for the major pairs, which is fairly typical of some of the better-known brokers? Do they offer customer support, which will respond immediately, and which is exactly what you would need in a crisis? You might also want to ask them who their liquidity providers are because the more there are, the better the liquidity the broker will have, and this will mean that these providers will have done their homework on the broker too. The number on thing that concerns us here at Forex.Academy is the enormous amount of turnover of retail traders, data from the US securities regulator for October shows that Interactive Brokers lost 30% or $5 million of retail FX funds in recent months, this can only mean that retail traders are losing money, fast.

Here at Forex.Academy, our message is clear. Learn how to be a professional trader, and ensure you are winning consistently. We have all the lessons to help you become the successful trader you deserve to be. And they are all freely available!

Tags Forex, Forex bonus, Forex Broker, trading

Crypto Videos

The Best Cryptocurrencies To GPU Mine In 2020 – Part 2

Post author By Keiran
Post date 13 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/RdyRpQaqF1k

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 2

Part 2 of the series will continue with listing cryptocurrencies worth mining with your GPU in 2020. Once again, the cryptocurrencies listed in the guide are a personal choice, and you will have to do your research and choose your favorite cryptocurrencies to mine.

Monero (XMR)

Monero is one of the most unusual cryptocurrencies as it pioneered the era of privacy and private money itself when it comes to the crypto industry. Monero is an open-source private cryptocurrency that is aimed towards people who want to transact funds and messages privately. The ability to be completely private gives Monero a serious use case, as well as a probable long life in the world of crypto. On top of that, Monero recently got included by many wallets. Value miners, which mine cryptocurrencies solely based on their use case and future potential (rather than current profitability), are certainly considering XMR as their cryptocurrency of choice.
Monero is based on the CryptoNightV8 proof of work algorithm. It generates 3.38 XMRs per block, which occurs every 2 minutes.
Recommended GPUs for XMR mining are NVIDIA cards as well as AMD cards.

Ubiq (UBQ)

Ubiq is a decentralized platform that is used for hosting smart contracts and DApps, just like Ethereum. It is another fork of the Ethereum network itself. However, Ubiq markets itself as stable as well as a bug-free version of Ethereum. Ubiq’s main advantage is its ease of use. It can be complicated for developers to build their projects on a dynamic platform such as Ethereum, as it is continuously evolving.
Ubiq has tweaked its proof of work algorithm from Ethash to Ubqhash. It is also mineable using GPUs, but it has a few differences from its original algorithm. Its block time is 1.25 minutes, while its block reward is 7 UBQ per block. One thing to note is that Ubiq’s profitability is less than the profitability of ETH & ETC.
Recommended GPUs for UBQ mining are NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards.

Bitcoin Diamond (BCD)

Bitcoin Diamond yet another Bitcoin hard fork. It came to life in November of 2017 with the intent to overcome the so-called shortcomings of Bitcoin. The shortcomings addressed by BCD were Bitcoin’s lack of privacy and its slow transaction confirmation, amongst other things. BCD has increased its total supply from 21 million to 210 million, which in turn increased its block reward ten times than that of BTC. Bitcoin Diamond mining has a block reward of 125 BCD, released approximately every 8 minutes.
NVIDIA, as well as AMD cards, are recommended GPUs for BCD mining.

Aion (AION)

The Aion Network is a blockchain project that addresses problems that DApps of today face. These problems include scalability, privacy, as well as interoperability. AION uses a proof of work algorithm called Equihash, which is well-suitable for GPU mining. This cryptocurrency has the lowest block timing of all the cryptos mentioned here. Its block timing is a staggering 10 seconds. The Equihash algorithm releases 1.5 AION as its block reward each block. This block speed allows miners to expect their rewards much faster, which is useful in some cases.
AION is also quite a popular choice amongst miners who mine cryptocurrencies that they expect will increase in value in the future.
NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards are recommended GPUs for AION mining.

Energi (NRG)

Energi is, without a doubt, one of the most profitable cryptocurrencies minable with GPU. While this one is not the most popular choice for value-driven miners, it is for the miners guided by current profitability. If you don’t care about the use case of the cryptocurrency and are optimizing rigs to mine the most profitable currencies at this very moment, Energi is one of the best, if not the best choice for you.
Energi miners can expect 2.28 NRG approximately every 1 minute.
As with every cryptocurrency so far, recommended GPUs for NRG mining are NVIDIA and AMD.

Conclusion

This was the part 2/3 of the “Best cryptocurrencies to mine in 2020” series. Mine with caution and always take into consideration both the future value of a cryptocurrency as well as its current profitability.

Tags Crypto, crypto analysis, crypto mining

Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session Five – Becoming A Professional Trader

Post author By Keiran
Post date 12 December, 2019
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Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Five

Thank you for joining Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Five.
In session three, we demonstrated that by using technical analysis in forex trading will greatly stack the odds in your favour. And in session four, we covered the importance of how the study of a country’s economy, in the form of fundamental analysis, is also a key aspect that professional traders observe.

Another area which is of great importance is timing, both the time of day and timing when it comes to executing your trades. I am sure you will have been to a party that started at 8 p.m, and began fairly lively enough, and then picked up a little more an or so later as more people arrived, and by 11 p.m. when even more guests arrive, the party was in full flight. Forex trading also has it’s lively, or volatile times during the day, especially during the morning session of each of the respective countries’ time zones. For example, European institutions, who are the big guns and who mostly are the cause of the markets to move about, arrive at their desks at around 7 AM CET, followed by London at 7 AM GMT, and then the US markets open at 7 AM EST and they are followed by Chicago a couple of hours later, and then the Asian markets at around 11 PM GMT, and please allow for seasonal clock changes. The point is, the more people trading simultaneously, the more money in the system, and the likelihood for more volatility.
The market can also become extremely volatile around the time of economic data release of each country, as we discussed in section 4. Therefore new traders are advised to be receptive when it comes to trading around these times due to huge volatility and the possibility of huge movements or swings in the price of a currency pair.

The really cool thing about forex trading is that there are a number of tools that you traders can use to automatically stop trades at a chosen point to mitigate against losses. But the best friend for a new trader is a demo account, which allows novice traders to learn how to trade in real market conditions, but without risking their own funds. The bottom line is if you cannot trade and make money consistently on a demo account, you will not be able to make money trading on a real money account. Here at Forex.Academy, we recommend a good educational grounding, which we provide free of charge, and then we recommend practice, practice, practice.

Tags Forex, Forex beginners course, Technical Analysis, trading

Crypto Videos

The Best Cryptocurrencies To GPU Mine In 2020 – Part 1

Post author By Keiran
Post date 11 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/jygCIw2-Gtk

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 1

Cryptocurrency mining can be extremely rewarding if done right. Many people earn substantial amounts of money by running full mining nodes for various cryptocurrencies. This guide will share a few meaningful cryptocurrencies you, too, can mine via GPUs to earn rewards and contribute to their decentralization. The cryptocurrencies listed are a personal choice, and you will have to choose your favorite cryptocurrencies to mine based on their profitability as well as your beliefs in the cryptocurrency’s future potential.
Part 1 of this series will showcase 3 cryptocurrencies worth mining in 2019 and 2020.

Ethereum (ETH)

Making a list of top GPU mineable cryptocurrencies without including Ethereum can be considered criminal. Ethereum, which is also known as Ether, is an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. This network acts as a fuel for the decentralized projects it hosts. Ether is a GPU mineable cryptocurrency and is based on the Ethash proof of work algorithm. At the time of writing, if you assemble and optimize an excellent GPU rig, you can expect handsome profits as its current block reward is around 3 ETH per block.
GPUs that are recommended for ETH Mining are NVIDIA as well as AMD.

Ethereum Classic (ETC)

Ethereum Classic is an Ethereum fork. It is also a GPU mineable coin.
Once these two cryptocurrencies split up, many people debated whether Ethereum Classic is the “real” Ethereum. However, that is a story for another day. Ethereum Classic is also based on the Ethash proof of work algorithm, just like Ethereum. Yet, this cryptocurrency has a slightly higher block reward than Ethereum does, granting 4 ETC per block. Even though the higher block reward can be explained by the higher inflation ETC has, it also has higher scarcity because its supply is fixed.
In any case, Ethereum Classic is definitely one of the most profitable GPU minable cryptocurrencies with a couple of GPU rigs set up. Once again, the recommended GPUs for ETC mining are NVIDIA and AMD cards.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG)

Anyone who has been involved with the cryptocurrency industry for some time has heard about Bitcoin Gold. Bitcoin Gold is another fork of Bitcoin. It came to life in 2017, intending to make Bitcoin mining more democratic. BTG wanted to do that by creating a version of Bitcoin that can be mined with GPUs rather than monopolized CPU-based mining devices.
As BTG is a fork of Bitcoin, its block timing and block reward remain unchanged. Each block gets validated (approximately) every 10 minutes and grants 12.5 BTG, respectively. However, its proof of work algorithm, Zhash, is ASIC resistant, which means that it favors GPU miners.
No difference in here either, as the recommended GPUs for BTG mining are NVIDIA and AMD cards.

Caution

While mining can be a great tool for passively earning money, one has to take into consideration many factors. After all, this is not a small investment. One word of advice would be not to engage in cloud mining as the contracts these platforms offer are rarely good.

Tags crypto mining

Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session Four – Becoming A Professional Trader

Post author By Keiran
Post date 11 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/VB-iU3eVFm8

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Four

In session 3 we showed you the power of using technical analysis and how that enables traders to stack the odds in their favour when it comes to trading forex. Simply by adding a few technical indicators to your charts,, you will be able to identify recurring chart patterns and trends and make your trading decisions based on what these tools tell you about a currency pair, just like professional traders do all over the world.

However, if you are thinking about running off and opening a trading account and adding a couple of technical tools to your screens and start trading, you will be making the same mistake as many other novice traders. Because, although technical analysis is the backbone of currency trading, there are also other components that you must learn about before you dive in and risk your hard-earned cash.
The next key component which you must learn about is fundamental analysis. This is the study of a country’s financial status based on the money it has coming into its coffers in the form of taxes and its overall expenditure, including debt.

All of this will show whether a country is doing well, OK and as the market is expecting it to perform, or if it is doing badly. This, in turn, will affect the value of the currency of that country. And if we go back to session one, where we learned that all currencies are traded in pairs, new traders must understand that a country’s wealth is constantly changing and, therefore, the value of its currency – based on another country’s currency – will continually fluctuate.
What’s more, countries regularly release economic data regarding the status of their country, and this will include information such as the amount of people that are unemployed, the amount of income that a country generates, which is called it’s gross domestic product or GDP, and also other factors including the amount of spending power of its population and the country’s interest rates and future plans help the country in times of slowdowns, or to help slow down an economy if the national debt becomes too high.

And so it is essential to follow an economic calendar, which is freely available and to ensure that trading positions are not opened directly when such data is released, because the market can become volatile at these times.
Forex.Academy, Is a complete library on fundamental analysis, and do not worry, because you do not need to be an economist, but we will show you the absolute basic requirements that you should know in this ar

Tags Forex, Forex beginners course, forex education, Technical Analysis

Crypto Videos

Calculate Crypto mining profitability – Is Mining Still Worth It?

Post author By Keiran
Post date 10 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/ZFdJd04OLOc

Crypto mining profitability guide

If anyone is serious about cryptocurrency mining, they’ll have to learn how to maximize their equipment and their invested resources. Not knowing which equipment is profitable and how to optimize its use may end up with you having a negative balance. On top of that, not knowing the mining profitability of your rig might make you spend a lot more money without a cause or overestimate your earnings. This guide will try to show how to calculate the profitability of your mining setup as well as which tools to use to increase your profits.

Factors affecting mining profits

Many factors influence the outcome of a person’s mining profitability. The most significant factor are undoubtedly the cryptocurrency’s price, mining algorithm, the hardware that a person utilizes to mine crypto as well as the total hash rate of the network.

Choosing a cryptocurrency to mine

Mining cryptocurrencies involves solving complex mathematical algorithms by utilizing computational power. There are many consensus algorithms out there, but we will list the most popular ones.

SHA-256 consensus algorithm

The SHA-256 algorithm uses brute computational power to process the cryptographic equations. Bitcoin was easily mined with the CPUs and GPU cards that are used in regular PCs before it was popular. However, as the years progressed, and the market matured, mining hardware ended up evolving to keep up with the increasing mining difficulty. At the moment, Bitcoin is mined purely by using ASIC miners.

Scrypt consensus algorithm

The scrypt consensus algorithm uses a substantial amount of RAM as well as parallel processing to generate cryptocurrencies. This means that you can use GPUs to mine them instead of CPU, which is required for the SHA-256. Scrypt-based ASICs are quite unpopular at the moment, which brings the mining difficulty at a lower level than what it currently is with Bitcoin.

Mining profitability calculators

Many websites can be used to calculate the mining profitability for a specific coin. They take into account the mining equipment you use, power consumption, electricity cost as well as and other details. More straightforward calculators with fewer factors are available for free, but so are much more advanced ones, with features such as:

Hash rate,
Power consumption,
Power cost,
Mining difficulty,
Block reward,
Cryptocurrency price in USD.

Mining profitability can be calculated for various time-frames: hourly, daily, monthly as well as yearly.

Conclusion

Mining is a great way to earn cryptocurrencies passively. On the other hand, you need to take various factors that can affect mining profitability into consideration. Having an accurate prediction about all of the factors can be quite tricky, especially when some factors are out of your control. Be careful and do all of the calculations before investing in cryptocurrency mining gear.

Tags Crypto, crypto mining, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Education

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency Market Volatility Part 2 – Liquidity & manipulation

Post author By Keiran
Post date 10 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/okv2-YqHMUk

Crypto market volatility – part 2

Last time we talked about what volatility is and how it is maturing in the crypto markets. We also talked about bad press and fraudulent activity that envelops the industry. Now, we will continue talking about what affects volatility and go more in-depth.

Market size VS. volatility

The cryptocurrency market has received a great deal of attention from both profit-seeking traders and technology supporters. However, the market as a whole is still quite young and not as big as it can be. If we take a further look at its size, it cannot even be compared to traditional markets. It is a fact that the market size does affect volatility significantly.
Small markets allow smaller investors to influence the price both ways in a greater way. Broader markets, on the other hand, handle bigger market orders with ease and without much of a price impact. However, the overall size of the crypto market on top of overleveraging greatly affected its volatility.

Liquidity is directly tied to the market size as well as market order size. Liquidity can be defined as the ease or difficulty of buying or selling an asset on a specific market at a certain price. Liquidity is often directly tied to the market volume, as more market makers provide bigger liquidity. If more people traded cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies would be more stable price-wise. However, the crypto market in its current state is not as liquid as it should be to support large market orders or possible market manipulations that occur. If we take a look at the altcoins market individually, we can come to the conclusion that they are tiny when compared to the Bitcoin’s market, let alone the individual fiat currency markets. Low liquidity markets often suffer from sudden and aggressive fluctuations in prices.

Market manipulation VS. volatility

When talking about liquidity problems of the crypto market, one has to mention the market manipulation that occurs. There is a way to influence the price and sway it in the desired direction by controlling the market sentiment. Traders with large enough capital can utilize such a strategy to influence the cryptocurrency market. This is colloquially called “spoofing.”
Spoofing is basically listing a big buy or sell order with no intention of it going through. Its sole purpose is to show up on the market order panel as a “wall” of buyers or sellers. This alone will affect the market sentiment in the short term, which is just enough time for the profits to be made. This way, the whales can guide the price whichever way they want. When the market participants acknowledge the large-sized position, the price moves the opposite way. As soon as the move in the other direction starts, the order is taken down.

Speculation VS. volatility

As the crypto market is still immature, and investors have no real price to anchor to, the market is mostly driven by speculation. Typically, we can determine the value of an asset by its utility and adoption (and various other factors), but crypto markets are currently not operating that way. Speculation is the main thing that extends the trend up or down. Therefore, the only way to invest in any cryptocurrency is to speculatively bet on its future use cases, adoption, and traction.
Markets guided by speculation are, in every single case, recorded so far, volatile by nature.

Lack of institutional investors VS. volatility

A survey done by Fidelity Investments shows that 22% of surveyed institutional investors already purchased cryptocurrency in some quantity. If this survey can be translated to the institutional interest as a whole, crypto markets can be proud to show a remarkable increase from near-zero institutional investment in 2016 to the current numbers. However, the funds invested by the institutional investors are negligible compared to how much they invest in traditional markets.
Even though institutions are increasingly more interested in crypto, lack of proper guidelines, and transaction mediums such as ETF’s made it harder for them to get ahold of a large amount of cryptocurrencies. As time passes, institutions will undoubtedly dip their toes in cryptocurrency markets on a larger scale.
As the market lacks institutional investors, price stability is lacking, as well. Institutions are often using trading algorithms to perform trades for them, which in turn increase the liquidity as well as the stability of the markets.

Misconceptions on volatility catalysts

Many little things influence the crypto market volatility. No one can calculate the impact of any single factor. However, we often see some misconceptions when talking about which factors do have an effect on the market. Some factors are portrayed as much more significant just because they are eye-catching.
One such factor is the lack of regulation and how it affects the volatility of the markets.

Lack of regulation VS. volatility

The crypto market is not regulated by any government or institution. However, this lack of regulation does not affect the volatility of the market itself. People often connect high volatility with the lack of regulation, which is not correct. Cryptocurrency markets are self-regulated by the consensus. They require no government regulation to operate efficiently. However, they could use the government’s approval, which will probably never happen as crypto can be considered a direct competitor to fiat currencies.
Is market volatility even that good?
After understanding which factors affect the volatility of the cryptocurrency markets, people are mostly unsure whether increased volatility is a good thing after all. Volatility represents different things to different kinds of investors. We can look at it from two major standpoints:

The trader’s perspective.
The investor’s perspective.

The trader’s standpoint says that the volatility is quite good as long as the markets are liquid enough. The level of volatility considered useful varies depending on the person’s risk tolerance. A risk-averse individual would avoid high-volatility trades as they value stable investments more. However, cryptocurrency traders are considered to be risk-takers in most cases.

An investor, however, might consider volatility as a bad thing when it reaches a certain threshold, which is extremely low when compared to one of the retail traders. An investor wants to preserve their wealth rather than turning a quick profit. Also, investors are mostly here in the long run because they support the underlying technology.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrencies are a fairly young asset class, and its concepts are already revolutionizing the world we are living in. However, until full adoption happens, the cryptocurrency markets remain volatile.

Tags Crypto, Crypto course, cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency, Education

Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session Three – Becoming A Professional Trader

Post author By Keiran
Post date 9 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/R-5dYUd_5uE

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Three

Thank you for joining us for session 3 of forex trading for absolute beginners. Forex Academy has all your forex trading educational needs from complete novice through to professional trader, and it’s all free to our followers!

In session 1 and 2 we mentioned that Forex trading is very similar to gambling when trading with no understanding of how the market works, and where the odds can be stacked in your favor and where Forex trading becomes a profession when novice traders take the time to learn the ropes before opening a live trading account and diving in.
We also mentioned that Forex is mostly traded by using Technical Analysis, where traders use tools they drag onto their screen charts in order to visually see when markets are going up or down, and trade accordingly.

Example A

In Example A, we can see a line graph chart of the exchange rate of the British pound, with the black line showing the price moving up and down against the US dollar, AKA GBP:USD. On the face of it, it looks extremely erratic.

Example B

Let’s take a closer look in example B, where we have drawn some arrows showing the pair moving up and down, but it would be almost impossible to know when to trade.

Example C

But in example C, where we have changed the line graph for coloured bars, which are known as candlesticks, we can clearly see that the red candles help us to see when the price is moving down, and the green ones help us to identify with the price is moving up, such as in example D.

Example D

Example E

In example, E, we have added our first technical analysis indicator, which is called a stochastic oscillator. This tool tells traders when a pair may have gone too high or too low, which are also known as periods of overbought and oversold. It is clear to see that when the redline of the stochastic has moved to a high point and then crossed over the green, and they are both moving down, that the price of the pair moves lower, and when the green has crossed over the red after they have moved to a low, then the currency pair moves higher.
Here are just two simple tools that traders use to stack the odds in their favour.
But none of this would be any use at all without another aspect of trading, which we will discuss in session 4.

Tags Education, Forex, Forex beginners course, Technical Analysis, trading

Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session Two – Becoming A Professional Trader

Post author By Keiran
Post date 9 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/T5CoQYsexYc

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Two

Thank you for joining us for session 2 of forex trading for absolute beginners. Forex Academy is
your one-stop-shop for all your educational needs when it comes to trading currencies.
In session one, we alluded to the fact that trading is like gambling. However, when you walk into a casino, I think we can all agree that the odds are pretty much stacked in the houses’ favor. And also, gambling on football match outcomes and where people also bet on corners, throw-ins, and the next goal scorer. Again the bettings shops are the ones making the millions because, in gambling, the odds are completely stacked in favor of the betting companies.

The reason why forex trading is often seen as gambling is that a high percentage of new retail customers lose all of their money within the first six months of opening a trading account. In fact, it is over 70%. The majority of these individuals do little or no research and simply have a ‘punt’ on a trade as if they were in a casino or betting on a football match outcome. And of course, subsequently, go on to lose all of their money. New retail traders forget one simple thing: currency trading is a profession. The money markets are run by professional people; many of them are extremely well educated with finance-related degrees.

However, there is still plenty of room for retail traders to consistently make money in Forex, no matter what level of education, as long as they take the time to learn about the various aspects which go into trading. Those that do become traders will have taken the time to educate themselves about the Forex market, and those that cannot be bothered to learn will remain as gamblers.

Let’s give you an example of how retail forex traders regularly make money. If you saw a limousine driving down the street with somebody throwing money out of the window, the next thing you would see would be hundreds of people following that limousine and picking up all the cash.

Simply put, institutional traders move the markets because of the huge amounts they trade with. But they leave a trail of cash for retail traders to pick up in the form of trends that appear on our computer screens. These trends are the limousine driving down the street leaving money for everyone else to pick up
Because these trends are the basis of patterns that recur time after time on traders’ screens. Professional traders and retail traders alike are now becoming more dependent on using chart based tools to decipher these patterns, which, when followed correctly, will stack the odds are in their favor by up to 70%.

This type of trading is called technical analysis. And over 90% of the time, forex trading is done by technical analysis. That’s right, billions of dollars exchange hands, often affecting countries’ economies, and it is largely based on screen patterns! Only when new traders learn all that there is to know about trading with technical analysis, only then they will become professional traders and not gamblers.

Here at Forex Academy, our educational courses have been put together by ex institutional traders and market professionals, and we will take you through the knowledge process, step by step, to help you on your way to becoming a Professional Trader. So take your time and enjoy the ride.

Tags Forex, Forex beginners course, trading

Forex Videos

Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session One – Becoming A Professional Trader

Post author By Keiran
Post date 8 December, 2019
No Comments on Forex Academy Education For Absolute Beginners Session One – Becoming A Professional Trader

https://youtu.be/llluFYdKTWc

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session One

Hello, and welcome to Forex Academy, your one-stop shop to complete education in foreign exchange currency trading, which is also known as Forex or FX.

The foreign exchange market is a global network of banks, financial institutions, governments, and retail traders who take advantage of the 5 trillion dollars that are traded every day in the foreign exchange market.

Many of the larger institutions buy and sell, or exchange currencies – which are always traded in pairs – and many other financial firms and also retail traders simply trade based on whether a currency pair is going up or down. If they place a buy trade and a pair goes up, they make money, and if they place a sell trade and the pair goes down, they also make money. And that is what happens most of the time, currency pairs go up and down against each other continually. And so traders bide their time and pick their moments to take on a trade.

Now while this may sound very daunting, if you think about it, you have probably been on holiday to a different country and spent some time shopping around online or at travel agents looking for the best currency exchange rate to give you more buying power on your holiday. In which case congratulations, you have already been trading currencies. I expect that a lot of you may have also enjoyed gambling at some time, perhaps at the roulette wheel in a casino, or playing cards such as Black Jack, and maybe you got lucky and made a little bit of money, however, typically the odds are stacked against you, and it’s a fact that the House always wins in the end.

But, what if you could go to a casino where the odds were stacked in your favor, of course, you would be very interested in that opportunity? Welcome to currency trading because if you take the time and effort to learn how to trade correctly, you can stack the odds in your favor when you trade currencies.

OK, the thought of spending a lot of time learning a new specialist subject might not seem like a lot of hard work, but if you think about it you will not strip down a car engine without first taking a mechanics course, and you wouldn’t take out a horse’s appendix without first going on a comprehensive vet’s course. And currency trading is no different. There is a lot to learn. However, the more you learn, the better trader you will become.

And here at Forex Academy, we have a wealth of education to pass on to you so that you can stack the odds in your favor and learn to trade currencies like a professional.

Tags Forex, Forex beginners course, Fundamental Analysis, Technical Analysis, trading

Forex Videos

Advanced Forex Education – Technical Analysis Trading With Confluence

Post author By Keiran
Post date 6 December, 2019
No Comments on Advanced Forex Education – Technical Analysis Trading With Confluence

https://youtu.be/v3Bzlu4y_uE

Advanced learning on technical Analysis – trading with technical confluence

As a financial trader in the forex market, we are looking for evidence that underpins our trading decisions and ensures our decision making is correct and that, therefore, the tools we use are stacking the odds in our favour. When these technical tools are aligned, this is called technical confluence. This is where price action and technical indicators converge and help us to make informed decisions. The clearer the indication pointing to directional movements, the better idea we will have to trade-off of our technical analysis charts.

Technical confluence is when we have at least two technical elements on the same chart. And because we are not gamblers, traders look for confluence to strengthen the case before making trading decisions. However, different traders look at different technical signals over different time frames. And this is why trading is inherently risky. But the good news is that all traders are looking at the same price movement and assimilating the same economic data, and therefore, all that we can do is take this into consideration and look for the best high probability setup we can achieve.
Let’s look at some technical confluence trading opportunities.

Example A

Example A is a 5-minute time frame chart of the USDJPY pair, with price action as denoted by Japanese candlesticks. It looks like initially, the market was trading sideways and then took on a bullish momentum around the middle of our chart. Let’s try and identify if technical indicators foresaw the push higher.

Example B

In example B, we have drawn a line of resistance and a line of support which confirms consolidation or sideways trading, and this is confirmed by at least two attempts to push through these areas in both directions.

Example C

In example C, we have added a relative strength index (RSI) which is a technical indicator used in the analysis of the historical strength or weakness of a currency pair based on the opening and closing prices over a set amount of candlestick, in this case 14, and is defined as being weak when it hits the 30 line and strong when it reaches the 70 line. Price often reverses or pulls back from these key levels.
Our RSI initially touches the 30-line at the extreme left of our chart and then begins a slow ascent. At position 5 our RSI is showing most of its momentum to the upside, and price action is also maintaining its momentum to the upside and towards our area of resistance. Price action continues upwards and punches through the area of resistance, and this then becomes an area of support. Price action continues in a bullish tone from this point. This was a trade opportunity and was confirmed by price action and the RSI, plus our support and resistance lines. Therefore, this area of confluence presented a bullish trade signal to buy at position 5 with a stop loss just below our original support line.

Example D

In example D, we have now identified the low of the move at point 1 and the high of the move at point 2. The area at point 2 would suggest to our earlier buyers that price action might be topping out here and for two technical reasons: Firstly our RSI almost touches the 70-line, and also our candlesticks have pierced the Bollinger bands, which we just added, and where we know that if this happens there is a 90% chance that price action will revert back inside the bands. Price action does level off to a certain extent before pulling back lower, and this is highlighted by our descending RSI line.

Example E

We also identified that price action is fading to the upside on this chart by introducing the stochastic oscillator, as in example E. We can see that while price action momentum continues upwards from point A to point C, the stochastic is overbought at point B and at point D it fails to reflect the high of the price action at point C, and this shows divergence, and where divergence tells us the market is slowing.

Possibly traders began to sell the pair at point A, being seen as overbought and that the subsequent price action began to lose momentum as volume begins to dry up from the bulls.

This is another good example of confluence where at least two technical indicators are working together stack the odds in our favour. It also helps us to identify areas where other traders began to close down or exit their previous buying trades in fear of a reversal in price action. And so it is wise to consider where other traders may be bailing out of their trades and that therefore this presents options to close trades and look for reversal setups.
Topping out here and for two technical reasons: Firstly our RSI almost touches the 70-line, and also our candlesticks have pierced the Bollinger bands, which we just added, and where we know that if this happens, there is a 90% chance that price action will revert back inside the bands. Price action does level off to a certain extent before pulling back lower, and this is highlighted by our descending RSI line.

Tags Confluence, Forex, Technical Analysis, trading

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency Market Volatility Part 1 – The Future Of Crypto

Post author By Keiran
Post date 6 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency Market Volatility Part 1 – The Future Of Crypto

https://youtu.be/CaiQFg_5BIo

Cryptocurrency market volatility – part 1

The cryptocurrency market as a whole is known for being volatile from its very conception. The past couple of years have undoubtedly been a rough ride for millions of investors, but things are starting to look better. While some people managed to make their fortune investing in cryptocurrencies, many had lost large sums in the bubble that burst at the beginning of 2018, which is when the bear market started.
However, Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies, are not made to be volatile, but for the reason of fulfilling their purpose. Certain cryptocurrencies were created to provide specific utility to its users, while others are designed to be digital money and to compete with fiat currencies directly. To understand why cryptocurrencies are volatile, we first have to understand the factors surrounding the industry.

What is volatility?

Traditional finance defines volatility as the fluctuation of an asset’s price in a particular time period. An asset is volatile if its price is rising or falling constantly and aggressively. The cryptocurrency market is a definition of a really volatile market, as the extreme fluctuations add and remove billions of dollars worth of market capitalization to and from the market every single day.

Adoption and market maturity VS. volatility

Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market, in general, is a relatively new concept when compared to other well-established traditional asset classes. A cryptocurrency must have a large user base to fulfill its role. The larger the user base of an asset, the less volatile and safer it will be. People have to learn how cryptocurrencies work and how using them will change the world. Only after fully grasping the concept of cryptocurrencies they become less volatile. As more people start using cryptocurrencies, prices will even out, and volatility will decrease to a point where the fluctuations will be so small that they will not matter.

One thing to note is that an average cryptocurrency investor is not a financial expert by any means. This makes concepts such as “FOMO” and “FUD” an even more significant factor than they are in the traditional markets.
Speaking about adoption brings us to the maturity of the cryptocurrency market. A young market backed by a brand new technology will, by nature, be more volatile than the already well-established traditional markets. Cryptocurrencies are going through an “infancy” period that is very similar to the one that the internet-based companies had to go through in the 1990s. New technologies require time to get perfected. They also have a high probability of failing.

Bad press VS. volatility

News reports, whether positive or negative, can easily affect the crypto volatility. With an average investor being relatively uneducated of how the markets work, each wrong portrayal of cryptocurrencies can spark a new wave of “FUD.”
News reports such as ones about hacking incidents, certain countries declaring stances on crypto as well as people with questionable past being tied to the industry instill a negative reputation of cryptocurrency markets in the minds of people. At the moment, cryptocurrencies are incredibly vulnerable to all the bad press and news, while they rarely react to the good news. News portals are often catering to the short attention spans of their millennial readers by writing outrageous (and often fake) biased texts.

Fraudulent activity VS. volatility

Cryptocurrencies have been a place where fraudulent activities occur more often than with other markets without any doubt. The crypto market has mostly seen two types of such activities:

Ponzi schemes in crypto markets

Ponzi schemes are a not-so-rare occurrence in markets governed by greed, and the crypto market is no different. Whenever people that lack knowledge of the markets try to get rich quickly, Ponzi schemes appear.

Ponzi schemes are a form of fraud where the company promises quick and substantial returns to the first investors by paying them the money from investors that come to the project later. The most famous Ponzi scheme in the crypto market is the notorious Bitconnect. Their “high-yield investment program” promised high returns to all of their investors. They used their native BCC token to pay out their old investors. Seeing high yield and great payouts automatically attracted the new investors. Bitconnect was undoubtedly not the only Ponzi scheme organization in the market. Many have successfully attempted to defraud people of their cryptocurrency holdings by creating “high-yield investment programs.”

Crypto market security breaches

Markets gain in volatility when an aggressive event strikes the space, and cryptocurrencies are no different. There have several occasions where security breaches, as well as hacks, caused extreme volatility spikes. None of these hacks happened to the cryptocurrencies specifically, but rather to the exchanges that stored them. One good example of increased volatility is the infamous Mt. Gox hack. This hack caused the biggest cryptocurrency exchange at that time to close their doors made 850,000 Bitcoin “vanish.” Later on, 200,000 Bitcoin were somehow found and retrieved, and are now handled by a trustee who sells them as he pleases. This trustee was one of the main reasons for increased volatility as he reportedly sold Bitcoin on the open market rather than over-the-counter as should be done with such quantities of cryptocurrencies.

Tags Crypto, Crypto volatility, Education

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 3 – Finding Fundamental Sources

Post author By Keiran
Post date 5 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 3 – Finding Fundamental Sources

https://youtu.be/ywoi6gA0bBE

Crypto fundamental analysis part 3 – project analysis

Cryptocurrency projects aren’t like traditional companies, both in terms of how they operate and how they are analyzed. As people don’t have as much data to sift through as you would with traditional stock investments and not everything is straightforward as it is with the financial reports.
Since crypto is still a new industry, it is highly speculative. However, there are several factors to look out for when analyzing an investment that can help decide whether a cryptocurrency is potentially a good moneymaker or not:

Target market
Competitor comparison
Team
Roadmap
Partnerships
Demand, token economics, and utility
Status and active users
Whitepaper
Community and reviews
Price history and age
Liquidity
Regulation

Target market

Every product has a market that they are trying to target. This means you should consider market size when trying to assess the fundamentals of a project. A broader market is, however, not always better. Large markets could already be over-saturated with possible solutions to the same problem. This would, in turn, decrease the likelihood of adoption. Niche markets are, on the other hand, small but could be highly receptive to a new solution to a problem.

Competition

Competition is extremely significant in any industry. It could be used to gauge the effectiveness of a cryptocurrency project. If we take a look at how many competitors a project has and how does it compare to the competition, we can conclude the possibility of the project succeeding in the market. Cross-checking with competitors can highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of a project. That can, in turn, suggest whether this project is likely to beat its competitors in the long-term.
Evaluating the level of competition and deciding whether a project is in good standing relative to the rest rather than just in absolute terms is essential. If a product is unique, it could mean that it is tapping into an unsaturated market or a non-existing one.

Team

Successful products always have great teams behind them. Looking at the team and the advisory board can tell you a lot about the project and how it will be managed.
When examining the project team, check who they are, where they are from, what’s their work history, etc. If a team with a good experience behind them runs the project, that’s definitely a good sign.

Roadmap

Crypto projects often have roadmaps that signify how fast their development will be. They show what upcoming plans they have and how they will move the project forward. Roadmaps can show how long it will take until a project becomes tradable, which is extremely important.
However, watch out for roadmaps that are too ambitious. Missed deadlines bring negative hype around the projects, making it a lousy investment in no time.

Partnerships

When assessing cryptocurrency projects, partnerships are essential for assigning the value of the project. They are more important for determining the validity of the project than the possible outcome of the partnership. However, make sure to understand the details of the partnership before passing judgment, as not all partnerships are created equal.
Demand, token economics, and utility
Price and value are, as with any tradable asset, driven by supply and demand. Theoretically speaking, the larger the demand, the higher the price. In cryptocurrencies, the demand is controlled by token economics and utility.
Looking into the token economics, which is the economy based around the token, can tell us many things. The token should have a use-case within its ecosystem to create sufficient demand. However, its other factors should be investigated, as well. Token supply, emission, and distribution are some of the factors that should influence the decision of whether to invest in a project.

Status

Not all cryptocurrency projects start on a level playing field. Newer projects have far less market traction while established credible projects with their names recognized by the community are much safer investments.
A high number of users that use the cryptocurrency in question is definitely contributing to its value.

Whitepaper

Whitepapers outline the purpose of the project. They are technical documents that have every single detail about the project in them. It is advisable to read the whitepaper thoroughly before investing in any project.
Community and reviews
A community that stands behind a project is a crucial factor in the fundamental analysis of crypto projects. Reading real user reviews can tell you a lot about how the cryptocurrency stands in the market and what are its strengths and weaknesses.

Price history and age

There are thousands of cryptocurrencies currently on the market, and it is safe to say that most cryptocurrencies come and go. If a project has established its name for a long time and has consistently maintained value relative to other cryptocurrencies, it might potentially be a good investment. However, substantial returns may instead come from smaller, and relatively unknown cryptocurrencies that breakout and become mainstream rather than from already established projects.

Liquidity

How often is the cryptocurrency traded, and how easy it is to exchange it for other cryptocurrencies without experiencing slippage? If a particular cryptocurrency generates lots of interest, lots of trading will happen. This could potentially mean that a token is in high demand.

Regulation

A project’s approach to regulation matters greatly in this day and age. If a project does not adhere to certain laws and regulations, that could have negative effects on the price in the future, even if one might not agree that cryptocurrencies should be regulated.

Conclusion

Fundamental analysis can be tricky when it comes to cryptocurrencies. There are many factors to consider and look at, and most of them are entirely subjective. However, with enough projects analyzed, you can compare results and see which projects stand out as viable investments.

Tags Crypto, crypto analysis, Crypto fundamental, Crypto Pick, cryptocurrencies

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 2 – Finding Fundamental Sources

Post author By Keiran
Post date 5 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 2 – Finding Fundamental Sources

https://youtu.be/h7lkNqM573U

Crypto fundamental analysis part 2 – Early-stage ICO analysis

While investing in a particular project, one does not have to follow the crowd to be successful. During times when the market is not in the best position for investing (when the whole cryptocurrency market seems to be losing value), people do not want to diversify as much. The ICO market has fewer investors. Most crypto investors are now either Bitcoin maximalists or have a compact portfolio of cryptocurrencies. When it comes to ICOs, they mostly follow the crowd and the hype, or they don’t invest at all. There are, however, many factors that need to be included in the analysis of ICOs before an investment is made. ICO projects need to be looked at from every single perspective available ( and that includes token economics, team, social media, website SEO optimization…), but what happens when an ICO is in the early stages, and most of the information is not available?

Early-stage ICOs

Investing in the early stages of an ICO might be the way to acquire the best bonuses. However, it also brings enormous risks, as the conclusive analysis is usually impossible to do due to the missing data. So how can investors determine whether a project is worth investing?

Project Idea

– Every ICO has to start with a good idea. The problem a project is trying to solve is the lifeline of their project, and what it is based on. The potential acceptance of a project idea can always be determined, no matter how, when we analyze the ICO project.
Team – it’s what makes the idea transform from vision to reality. When looking at early-stage ICOs, this feature becomes even more critical. We have too little data to work with, and that makes the team one thing we can thoroughly inspect. Both the team and the advisory board need to be impeccable for the project to be eligible for investment this early on.

Roadmap

– This factor has less value than the first two but is used to estimate the time frame of the investment.
Potential social media coverage – As the project is still early in development, this part will probably be non-existent. However, some reviewers can be pretty quick when it comes to discovering new and promising projects. Of course, the more people are eager to invest in the project as early as possible, the better the chances it has of succeeding as far as price goes.

The X factor

– Something that will make other people want to invest in this project. This X factor often comes in the form of an idea (or a part of it) or their monetization plan, which makes the project particularly interesting.
If you haven’t noticed, token economics and market traction weren’t mentioned anywhere in the list of important factors here. This is because we are looking at a potential gem project way too early for them to have these. Most projects post their token economics way later, while the market traction will be non-existent when we investigate projects this early on.

Conclusion

Early-stage ICOs can be potential moneymaking opportunities and can bring you amazing returns. On the other hand, we are operating with insufficient data in the ICO analysis, which inherently brings more risk. This lack of data means that compromising on any of the factors analyzed might cost you your investment. It is advisable to pick only the best of the best ICOs when it comes to investing this early on. Another good way of being sure of the project’s possibility of success it just keeping an eye on it and waiting for the data to present itself naturally. This will make the investment safer and the analysis more conclusive.

Tags Crypto, crypto analysis, ICO

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency Dangers – The Beginner’s Guide

Post author By Keiran
Post date 5 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency Dangers – The Beginner’s Guide

https://youtu.be/pgaFpXu0nFU

Cryptocurrency dangers – beginner’s guide

Many people see the amazing returns cryptocurrencies can bring and decide to invest their life savings or take out a loan. DO NOT do this. The volatility of the cryptocurrency market can slaughter you your investments, meaning that your life savings or loan would be gone. You can lose all your money by investing more than you are willing to spend on things you don’t understand properly. No one should fall into the trap, thinking this is a “get rich quick scheme,” as it is exactly the opposite of that.

It took years for early Bitcoin investors to gain big returns, increasing from a few pennies to where it is now. With how young this technology is, people should invest only when they see the true potential of crypto in the long-term.

Cryptocurrency hype factor

Cryptocurrencies bring a lot of hype with them. The simple explanation of why would be because most people do not know what they’re investing in and would rather listen to the crowd.
As the crowd is a quick decider on the cryptocurrency trend, prices either skyrocket or plummet. Taking out loans or investing life savings in such investments would be unreasonable. Even though the hype factor has diminished as the technology is maturing, there are still more than just traces of it on the market.

One should be informed and armed with knowledge before jumping on the hype-train. This would significantly reduce the investment risk. Most importantly, this way of thinking would position your investments to be aimed towards the long-term fundamentals of the technology. There are plenty of opportunities to make enormous profits in the cryptocurrency market. All the investors should have is patience as well as wisdom to acquire the right knowledge before investing. The worst thing that can happen is to be the person that invests based on the current hype without researching the project first. If the project seems too complex, then you should seek answers. The cryptocurrency community is filled with individuals that will be more than willing to simplify things and help you understand each and every concept that is important to certain projects.

Ponzi schemes and HYIP’s

One of the most important skills that you absolutely must possess is the ability to identify cryptocurrencies with solid fundamentals. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies available, which make people overlook the fundamentals, and make investment decisions based on the hype for some reason. There is, however, one thing that can be worse than investing in a project that is more hyped up than it should be, and that is scam projects. There are numerous of Ponzi schemes as well as HYIP’s (high yield investment program) on the current market, though the number of such projects greatly reduced in the past year.

To clarify, a high-yield investment program (or HYIP for short) is a type of Ponzi scheme where investors get promised an unsustainably high return on investment by paying previous investors with the money invested by new investors. Investing in such programs is extremely good until it is not. At some point, these projects simply vanish, keeping all your money as theirs. No matter how appealing the returns sound, no one should invest in such projects.

The most famous Ponzi scheme cryptocurrency market has seen was Bitconnect. This organization promised investors fixed daily returns in return for investing in their project by buying their cryptocurrency. After working for a couple of months and paying people from their new customers, Bitconnect started to generate extreme amounts of hype. People promoted it willingly and were able to make insane returns – on paper. Almost no one managed to pull their funds out of the company before it got shut down in January 2018.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency investors should watch out as there are many dangers in this unregulated field. There is a potential to make great returns, but to also lose a lot of money. One should be careful and wise when it comes to investing in cryptocurrencies, both regarding the size of the investment and the projects they invest in. Don’t be led by hype and other people’s opinions, but rather form your own.

Tags Crypto, cryptocurrencies, Dangers of crypto investment, Education

Crypto Videos

Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 1 – Finding Fundamental Sources

Post author By Keiran
Post date 4 December, 2019
No Comments on Cryptocurrency fundamental analysis part 1 – Finding Fundamental Sources

https://youtu.be/iqUX1LiRNtw

Crypto fundamental analysis part 1 – Finding Sources

Navigating the world of cryptocurrencies can be very difficult for a beginner due to the vast usage of tech jargon, as well as concepts that will almost certainly confuse you. Add to that the relative infancy of the technology, it can be extremely difficult even to find structured resources to learn from.
Importance of doing analysis by yourself
For traditional investments such as stocks, fundamental analysis requires you to evaluate the financial health and viability of a certain company according to its financial statements. If the numbers look good, it can be said with confidence that the company has good fundamentals. However, performing fundamental analysis for cryptocurrencies is quite different in every regard. There are no financial statements to evaluate, and everything has to do with the importance of the technology as well as the acceptance of the general public.

What’s different?

Cryptocurrencies are not companies. They are rather representations of value or assets within a certain network. The viability of a certain cryptocurrency is not based on it generating revenue, but rather directly on the community participation as users, miners, and developers.
The cryptocurrency space is still a young industry, which means that almost all of the cryptocurrencies are in development stages rather than finished products. Due to this, most cryptocurrencies have limited uses cases in the real world. This makes it even harder to perform fundamental analysis.

Fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies must be performed differently than what’s traditionally done with stocks or other asset classes. It’s more important to engage in research to assess the viability and potential of the coins rather than what they are doing at the moment. A good understanding of a cryptocurrency’s fundamentals allows you to form opinions and stances, which are quite a rare occurrence in the world of cryptocurrencies.

How to find the right information

As an old saying goes: Knowledge is power. To assess a coin, we have to know where to get the information from first. Obtaining information about a cryptocurrency can be done in a couple of different ways:
Reading the whitepaper;
Checking out the cryptocurrency’s channels and blogs;
Checking out the cryptocurrency’s forums.

1. Cryptocurrency’s whitepaper

A whitepaper represents a detailed idea proposed by the development team. It outlines the purpose and mechanics of the cryptocurrency itself. A whitepaper represents the main source of evaluating the fundamentals of the coin. When performing fundamental analysis, you should always read the cryptocurrency’s whitepaper.
One thing that many people find as a drawback is the sheer technicality of the whitepaper itself. You have to understand quite a few concepts, mostly regarding finance and cyber-security, to read through the whitepaper easier.

2. Cryptocurrency’s channels and blogs

Channels and blogs represent the official and main channels of communication between the core development team and the general public. To do the fundamental analysis, you should take time to join a cryptocurrency’s Slack, Telegram, or Discord channel and see what the topics are there. Also, this is the place to ask questions and get more info on the project.
These channels are places where you can track the code updates that affect how a cryptocurrency is developing.

3. Cryptocurrency’s Community Forums

Forums are a great way to understand the cryptocurrency projects as well as the audience that follows it. This way, you can see the sentiments surrounding the project even better. This is also a great place to find simplified definitions of certain concepts as the community is usually well-informed.

The diversity of thoughts and different perspectives are never a bad thing as well, as they allow you to grasp the mechanics of the coin far better. If you’re not familiar with the technical jargon, many cryptocurrency projects have their “ELI5” articles on the forums. These articles try to “Explain it to me like I’m five years old,” which helps people that are not so much into cyber-security and programming in general.
The usual forums to look at would be Reddit, Bitcointalk, and Steemit.

Conclusion

All of the information about cryptocurrency projects is available online, and so are the opinions of other people. However, one should take time and investigate each potential investment by themselves as putting money on the line based on other people’s opinions is not a good investment strategy.

Tags Crypto, Fundamental Analysis, trading

Forex Videos

Free Forex Course Part 3 of 3 – Into The Hardcore Of Technical Analysis

Post author By Keiran
Post date 3 December, 2019
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https://youtu.be/0qdFcQCLD2Q

Into the Hardcore of Technical Analysis – Session three

In this session, we will continue with the moving average, convergence, divergence, or MACD indicator, as seen in example ‘A,’ this time we are looking at a USDJPY chart with a 5-minute time frame.

Example A

We have color-coded our MACD, which consists of a histogram, as denoted by the green and red stripes, which move above and below the 0-axis, which is also known as the centerline. And also two moving averages, which also move above and below 0-axis. Some MACD indicators do not support two MA’s, preferring a single MA, but they are supported in our version. The basic idea is that when the histogram has formed a peak and then moves towards the 0-axis, followed by the two moving averages crossing over and also moving towards the 0-axis, this gives a trader an indication that a pair is about to reserve direction. Traders also use this to gauge convergence and divergence, which also helps them to establish if the market is running out of steam and about to reverse.
In positions 1, 2, and 3, we can see that the moving averages of the MACD mimic, or converge with the 13 and 26 period moving averages around the price action. This is a clear indication that the MACD is in sync and, therefore, reliable at this stage.

Example B

In example ‘B’ of the same chart, we will take a look at divergence in closer detail. At position 1, the price action is moving lower at area ‘a,’ and the MACD histogram is keeping in pace with it at area ‘b.’ Price action then continues to move lower under both sets of moving averages; in itself, an indication of a bearish continuation, and again we see a low at area ‘c’ which coincides with a lower peak on the histogram at area ‘d.’ Everything is working in unison at this stage. However, at position 2, price action begins to flatten out at area ‘e,’ and although this coincides with area ‘f’ on the MACD histogram, the second push lower in price action at area ‘g’ is not matched at area ‘h’ on the histogram. This is now an area of divergence, where the indicators are moving away from one another, and tells traders that the push lower is fading and may be about to reverse. And which it clearly does, subsequently.

Example C

Traders also look for divergence in the moving averages of the price action chart and in MACD, as per example ‘c,’ because they also constantly throw up areas of divergence which traders need to constantly monitor for clues as to trend continuation and slowdowns and reversals.

Example D

Example ‘d’ is another area of divergence that traders keep an eye out for, as we can see in positions 1 and 2, where price action remains above its own set of moving averages, but where the histogram falls below its own moving averages. This can often signal that price action may be about to pull back.

Example E

In example e, we can see that the overall activity of the MACD is above the 0 axis, and this is When studying your charts, keep a keen eye open for areas when the histogram and its MA’s cross above or below the 0-axis, as many traders often use this as a signal to enter the market The MACD is also useful in telling traders about momentum. It does this by depicting how far the histogram and moving averages are away from the 0-axis. The further the distance, the greater the momentum.

Example F

In example ‘f,’ we return to our daily time frame chart of the EURUSD pair. And where we look at another favorite indicator, the Bollinger bands. This indicator is placed over the price chart and consists of a moving average, together with an upper and lower band. These bands are based on a statistical two standard deviations from the mean price. As standard deviations are a measurement of volatility, the bands adjust themselves to volatility in the markets, depending on the current volume.
When markets become more volatile, the bands widen, and when the markets are consolidating or less volatile, the bands begin to contract and move closer to the average price.
It is estimated that over 90% of price action will remain within the Bollinger bands. Therefore traders look for opportunities to go short or long in order to bring the price action back within the Bollinger bands. They are also trying to gauge when price action will begin to pick up, and thus force the bands open and this will result in extra volatility.

Tools that can help a trader to depict reversals in price action to coincide with the Bollinger bands would be momentum indicators, and stochastics, which shows when the market is overbought and oversold. When these tools combine together, they can be very powerful in a trader’s armory,
supportive of the overall trend, which is bullish.

Tags Crypto, Forex, Technical Analysis, Technical analysis course, trading

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 4/5) – BitMEX’s beginner-friendliness and customer support

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 3/5) – TT International partnership and insurance fund

BitMEX in-depth guide (part 2/5) – contracts and fees

Know your market, know your levels

A New Traders Best Friend

Why you should Know The Normal Distribution

What is a Distribution

Histograms

The Normal Distribution

The Central Limit Theorem

Properties of the Normal Distribution

Normal distribution probabilities

We can anticipate that

Risk versus Sentiment

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 5/5

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 4/5

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 3/5

Creating an account

ID Verification

Verification Levels

Additional Security

Basic Probability Concepts II

Probability

Estimated probability

Fair odds

Rules when Combining Probabilities

Addition Rule

Mutually exclusive events

Non-mutually exclusive events

The multiplication Rule

The Basics Of Statistical Analysis In Forex Part 1 – Understand Your Edge

Coinbase Exchange in-depth review – part 1/5

Why Knowing your Strategy parameters makes sense

Prepare for the crypto tax season

Capital losses are deductible

Accounting methods

Tax-loss harvesting

Conclusion

Steemit economy explained

IEO marketing – part 3/3

ICOs and STOs are not that much different from IEOs

IEO’s explained – part 1/3

IEO marketing – part 2/3

What are the best pairs to trade?

Trading The Euro US Dollar Pair

Cryptocurrency exchanges – beginners edition What are cryptocurrency exchanges?

Fees

Payment Methods

Verification Requirements

Geographical Restrictions

Exchange Rate

Conclusion

Get your head straight Session Three

Token swap explained – part 4

Trading Psychology – Get your head straight – Session Two

Token swap explained – part 3

Token swap explained – part 2

Token swap explained – part 1

Technical Analysis; The Difference Between Leading and Lagging Indicators

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 3

Bonus Brokers Are For Jokers – Forex Bonus Debunked

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 2

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Five

Best Cryptocurrencies to GPU mine in 2020 – part 1

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Four

Crypto mining profitability guide

Factors affecting mining profits

Choosing a cryptocurrency to mine

SHA-256 consensus algorithm

Scrypt consensus algorithm

Mining profitability calculators

Conclusion

Crypto market volatility – part 2

Market size VS. volatility

Market manipulation VS. volatility

Lack of institutional investors VS. volatility

Misconceptions on volatility catalysts

Lack of regulation VS. volatility

Conclusion

Forex.Academy Education For Absolute Beginners – Session Three

Cryptocurrency exchanges – beginners edition
What are cryptocurrency exchanges?